Both cycling fans and pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in Montréal’s Mont-Royal Park and its surrounding area for the 14th annual Grands Prix Cycliste de Montréal (GPC de Montréal) on Sept. 14.
The GPC de Montréal is the only top-ranked professional cycling series hosted in North America, and is a Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) registered road race. It consists of two events: a 216 km race in Quebec City and a 209.1 km race through Montreal. The Montreal course features 17 laps of steep, winding roads on Mont-Royal, with a total elevation of 4,573 m. This year, 207 riders competed, including nine Canadians—seven of them representing the Canadian National Team.
Teammates Brandon McNulty and Tadej Pogačar of UAE Team Emirates were the first to cross the finish line. The duo completed the race in five hours and 14 minutes. McNulty, an American racer, crossed ahead of the famed Slovenian cyclist, Pogačar, by a friendly few milliseconds. Pogačar, a two-time winner of the GPC de Montréal—in 2022 and 2024—also holds the 2025 Tour de France title, the 2024 UCI World Road Championship, and an arguable position as one of the greatest cyclists of all time. Pogačar’s performance on Sept. 14 shaved 14 minutes off his winning GPC de Montréal time last year, despite disruptions caused by a protest along the av. du Parc race section.
The top Canadian result came from Hugo Houle of Israel—Premier Tech (IPT), who finished 45th, 15 minutes and one second behind McNulty. IPT was at the center of the day’s demonstrations, where an estimated 200 protesters gathered along the race barriers on av. du Parc to call on the UCI to exclude IPT from competition in light of Israel’s continuous acts of genocide in Gaza.
Israel—Premier Tech has close ties to Montréal. Sylvan Adams, who has since moved to Israel, is a Quebec-born billionaire with a strong affiliation with McGill University and co-ownership of the IPT team. Adams has heavily contributed to the development of IPT since its inception in 2014, and has long been the subject of criticism from pro-Palestinian groups, notably for his publicly made declaration as a “self-appointed ambassador to Israel.”
The IPT’s connection to the province also derives from its title partner and sponsor, Premier Tech, a Quebec-based agricultural technology company. Further, these ties echo a $29 million CAD donation made by Adams in 2022 to McGill University to establish the Sylvan Adams Sports Science Institute (SASSI). This funding established a partnership between McGill, Adams, and Tel Aviv University, drawing further concerns from pro-Palestinian campus advocates as they push the university to cut all financial ties to Israel.
Supported by various pro-Palestine and Gaza-affiliated Montreal cycling clubs, such as Bikers for Palestine—who shared details about the protest through their social media accounts—the demonstration at the GPC de Montréal also garnered support from Montreal’s chapters of Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR).
The Montreal protest followed demonstrations at the Vuelta a España, a three-week UCI race across Spain, where a crowd of nearly 100,000 called for Israel to be barred from international sporting events. Following the disruptions, which cut the championship race short, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón publicly urged for Israel’s exclusion from global competitions. The team stripped its uniforms of any direct references to Israel in response to the protests at the Vuelta. They wore their adapted uniforms in Montreal on Sunday.
Looking ahead, Montreal will host the UCI World Championship from Sept. 20-27, 2026. Last held in Montreal in 1974, the event is expected to be the largest sporting competition in the city since the 1976 Olympic Games, bringing together 1,000 elite cyclists from more than 75 countries.
This year’s GPC de Montréal highlighted the city’s prominent role in international cycling in two important ways: Its world-class competition, and the political debates at play within the sport. As Montreal prepares to host the 2026 UCI World Championship, it faces the challenge of balancing athletic excellence with questions of accountability beyond the race course.
