Canadian cyclist Woods set for the storybook Montreal finish he once thought was lost

MONTREAL – Michael Woods had long envisioned carving through the streets of Montreal, a city that helped launch his professional cycling career, as the perfect finish. Then a painful hernia robbed him of that moment.

Or so he thought.

One year after the injury forced an abrupt ending weeks before his planned swansong at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, the Tour de France stage winner is getting back on his bike.

Cycling Canada announced last month that Woods, 39, was coming out of retirement to ride for the national team at the upcoming road cycling world championships in Montreal.

“If the world championships were anywhere else but Montreal, I wouldn’t be doing them,” Woods said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … it has such, such big meaning to me that, yeah, I had to do this.

“But it’s the last one. For sure, it’s the last one.”

The Ottawa native, now residing in Andorra and Chelsea, Que., will also compete in this weekend’s Grand Prix Cycliste events in Quebec City and Montreal as a tune-up for the UCI World Tour’s flagship race on Sept. 27.

It’s a scenario Woods couldn’t have imagined when he walked away from the sport bruised and disillusioned some 12 months ago.

“I was almost jaded on the sport by the time I announced my retirement. It had become a job,” said Woods, who rode for the since-rebranded Israel-Premier Tech, during a phone interview last month. “I wasn’t recovering well; I wasn’t performing as well as I would have liked to. I definitely didn’t end on a good note last year, especially with the hernia.

“It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wasn’t happy with how I finished.”

Woods searched for himself in the months that followed, questioning past decisions and the route he’d taken, until he embarked on a calendar of bucket-list races that reignited his passion for racing.

Rather than grinding through another professional road cycling season, Woods turned to gravel biking, mountain biking and ski mountaineering (skimo), enjoying grassroots racing over the cutthroat UCI World Tour.

He notably competed in the French Alps at Pierra Menta — known as the skimo Tour de France — the renowned Leadville Trail mountain bike race in Colorado and Levi’s GranFondo in California.

“I realize now how lucky I was to be doing what I was doing over the last decade,” he said. “I feel very fortunate and even more passionate — and love for the sport — than I have had in years.”

The calendar also helped Woods stay fit for the challenge ahead. Thoughts of competing at the Montreal world championships first crept into his head around March or April, and an encouraging seventh-place finish at the Canadian national road race in June gave him the confidence to give it a go.

Woods admitted he felt nervous about coming back, noting the gruelling nature of each event, even by pro cycling standards.

“Three of the hardest races in the World Tour calendar,” he said. “I could get my ass kicked and tell you at the end of it that this was a terrible idea.”

But the opportunity to experience his long-sought full-circle moment was impossible to pass up.

An accomplished middle-distance runner — he was the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile and complete the Tour de France — Woods turned to cycling in 2012 after a recurring stress fracture in his left foot cut his competitive running career short.

He recalls starting bike racing with Tuesday night criteriums at “Les Mardis cyclistes” in Montreal’s Lachine borough, and riding alongside longtime coach Paulo Saldanha, who followed him on a moped up and down Mount Royal “countless times.”

Woods signed his first professional contract with Garneau-Québecor in 2013, and a year later finished in the lead group at the Montreal stop on the World Tour.

It’s a result the climbing specialist credits with jump-starting a career that has since produced a Tour de France stage victory in 2023 and three Spanish Vuelta stage wins (2018, 2020 and 2024).

A decade after that breakthrough, a giant mural along the world championships route celebrates his latest Vuelta triumph — but not without stirring local controversy.

The original mural, commissioned by building owner and former Israel-Premier Tech co-owner Sylvan Adams a year ago, depicted former teammate Hugo Houle and his 2022 Tour de France stage victory, the first by a Quebec-born rider.

But Houle left Adams’ team in December, and the artwork now celebrates Woods, who declined to comment when asked about the mural’s replacement.

His focus, instead, is on savouring the Montreal homecoming he once thought was lost.

As for what’s next following the world championships, Woods wasn’t entirely sure. A return to professional road cycling is out of the question, but racing in some form, he says, won’t end any time soon.

“I love competing, I love riding my bike,” he said. “I’ll ride my bike for the rest of my life; I’ll run and do trail racing and other events for the rest of my life, I know that for a fact.

“I just love it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2026.