My Experiences at the Tour de L’Abitibi

By: Vince Roberge, Team Bikesport Junior team member

Laurent Jalabert, Bobby Julich, Roland Green, and Louis Garneau are just some of the people who raced in the Tour de L’Abitibi when they were juniors at age 17 or 18. The Tour de L’Abitibi is one of five races that make up the UCI Junior World Cup, and the only one in North America. It is the largest race in the world for juniors, spanning seven days and just under 600 kilometers. This year I went to the Tour on Team Midwest, which I qualified for at the Midwest Regional Camp in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Twenty-seven teams attended this years Tour for a grand total of 162 riders. Teams from all around the world traveled to Val-d’Or, Quebec on July 18, including France, Belgium, Japan, South Africa, the U.S. and Canada.

My teammate, Jordan Stohl, and I left Ann Arbor, Michigan on the morning of Saturday, July 17, and after a night in Sudbury, Ontario we arrived in Val-d’Or on Sunday afternoon. The first race was not until Monday evening and we were the first of our Midwest squad to arrive. We got to the high school were all the teams and staff would stay for the next week. We signed for the key to our classroom, which would be our home for the next eight days. Every team received one room which would house their coaches, mechanic, massage therapist and any other staff and of course their six riders.

The first race was a criterium prologue which did not count towards the General Classification. It was seven laps around the 2.2 kilometer circuit with a one hundred dollar prime every other lap and on the final lap the winner took two hundred dollars. The back side of the course was nearly all uphill while the front side along with the finish was slightly downhill, which made for some really fast sprints (45 mph). This 2.2 kilometer circuit would be the finish of every stage this week except for the team time trial and the individual time trial. Before the start of this short criterium, all the teams were introduced on the stage and had a ceremonial sign-in for the race. It was an amazing feeling to be applauded by the people of Val-d’Or while on that stage.

The Tour consisted of a team time trial, an individual time trial, 4 road stages, and 2 criteriums. The team time trial was the first stage followed by a criterium that very afternoon. Both criteriums were on the same 2.2 kilometer circuit as the prologue. The 4 road stages all started in different towns and all ended on the circuit in downtown Val-d’Or. The road stages all began in the late afternoon, sometime around 5:00. All the riders would fill up the 4 school buses at around 2:00 and be shuttled to the start of the race. All of the coaches and mechanics would pack the team cars with bikes and supplies and meet the riders at the start. The roads that we raced back on were the major highways of the area. All the cars had to pull over on the shoulder while the riders and caravan of team cars passed. Many of the people would stand next to their cars and cheer or beep their horns as we went by on the highway. I have never experienced anything like racing in a pack of 160 riders at 32 miles per hour on highways where people are on the shoulder beeping their horns and cheering. It was like something I would see on OLN.

My favorite stage was the individual time trial, not only because it was my best finish but because of the course. The start of the time trial was about one kilometer down in a gold mine, twenty degrees cooler and with an average grade of 17%. The path was about five feet wide and covered with dirt and oil. Everyone’s strategy was the same: put it in your easiest gear and try to find some traction on the path. The interesting part of the time trial was how the riders got into the mine, since there is only one way in and out. The bikes were taken down into the mine the night before the race, so none of the riders would see their bikes until five minutes before their start time. After the first wave of riders had started, my wave was taken down into the mine in the actual carts used for mining. Everyone was given five minutes on a stationary bike and then five minutes on their own bike. No one had more than ten minutes of warm-up for this time trial. The biggest shock of the race was getting out of the mine and hitting the hot and humid air of the outside. This time trial was one of a kind, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to do it.

The people of Val-d’Or truly love and welcome the cyclists to their town. When we first arrived we had trouble finding the school, so we asked some recreational cyclists that were riding. Luckily they spoke wonderful English and were happy to write down some directions for us. Just before we pulled away they all wished us luck in the Tour for the next week. On other occasions, when our team would walk downtown with our rider identification lanyards around our neck, we would be treated with the utmost respect by store or restaurant owners and everyone else on the street. People would ask us how we were doing in the race or how we finished that day. Everyone was so interested and cared so much about the riders that it made the week in Val-d’Or seem like paradise.

For more information on the race, as well as complete results, promoters information, photographs and history of the race, check out the official race website at:

http://www.tourabitibi.qc.ca/francais/anglais/home.html