What Bici Got Up to at Montreal Worlds 2026
UCI ROAD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2026. MONTRÉAL, QC.
Recap
A group of us flew to Montreal on Thursday morning for the 2026 UCI Road World Championships and got home Sunday night. Eventually. Montreal's airport was a complete mess.
Worlds is a race week. For a bike shop, it's also the one week a year when nearly every brand we carry, plenty of shops we admire, and a surprising number of our own customers are all in the same few blocks of the same city.
So yes, we watched a lot of bike racing. We also spent a lot of time in rooms you don't usually get to see. This post covers both.
The Racing at Montreal Worlds 2026
The elite road races both came down to finishes worth rewatching, and both winners ride bikes we carry.
Demi Vollering (Netherlands) won the women's race. She attacked with 39 km to go, couldn't shake Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland), and settled it in the sprint. Vollering races for FDJ United-SUEZ on Specialized.
Brandon McNulty (USA) won the men's race with a solo move from 32 km out, holding on by 13 seconds. It's the first elite men's road title for an American since 1993. McNulty races for UAE Team Emirates-XRG on Colnago.
The weather was beautiful for most of the week, cooled off for the men's race, and the rain showed up within an hour of the finish. Anyone from Vancouver saw that coming.
The course deserves its own mention. It headed out into the valley, then came back for laps in town, so you could stand in one spot and watch the race come past again and again, close enough to hear the shifting.
A Big Week for the Brands We Work With
Some of the brands we carry had the kind of Worlds you plan a whole season around. Congratulations to every team that raced, and especially to these three.
The Part Most Riders Never See
Between races, we sat down with most of the brands we work with. Some were scheduled meetings. Some were a coffee that turned into an hour.
This is where a shop tells a brand what's working, what isn't, and what our riders keep asking for that's hard to get in Canada. It's also where we hear what they need from us. What gets said in those rooms stays there, and plenty of it is under wraps anyway.
Here's what most people miss: the racing is what we posted about, but the conversations are what you'll actually notice. A fair amount of what shows up on our floor next spring gets shaped in weeks like this one.
We also went looking for other bike shops. That sounds odd until you remember everyone in this business is solving the same problems in different cities. A few hours comparing notes with people doing the same job somewhere else beats a month of guessing.
After the Racing
Evenings at Worlds turn into a circuit. Factor and ASSOS shared a rooftop. Specialized had its space off the course. ENVE and Quoc took over Le Club, a Montreal shop with its own coffee bar, for music, art and drinks.
That last one felt a bit like home. A lot of our Vancouver community turned up, and we got to meet some of our online customers face to face for the first time. That was one of the best parts of the trip.
The expo was limited to UCI sponsors but had some good stuff. Shimano's automatic 3D foot scanner for the new Dynalast 2.0 shoes had people lining up, and Santini's line was too long to join every time we walked past.
Thank you
To everyone from Vancouver who made the trip. Seeing so many of you in Montreal was the best surprise of the week.
To the team back home who kept our stores running while we were away.
If you want the longer version, come by any of our shops and ask whoever's behind the counter. Most of us have a Montreal story by now.