This wasn’t how I wanted things to end.
Crossing the line with Benjamin Thomas at the Tour de France, I had no idea this would be my last race as a professional cyclist. That seems to be a theme in my life. Perhaps it is the optimist in me, or the fool, but I have rarely been aware that the thing I am doing will be the last time I do it.
I didn’t think the last time I ran a race would be the last time I ran a running race, and I wasn’t rolling around the Champs-Élysées thinking this was my final pro road race. Though, I was aware that it was my last Tour, and therefore I did try to savor the moment.
I’m going to call a spade a spade — the last stage of the 2025 Tour was awful. I had my reservations prior to starting the stage, but due to conditions out of the organizers’ control — the weather was abysmal — my last pro road race was for the dogs. It was cold and wet, and I was so over racing my bike in bad conditions (the stage the day before was equally filthy) that, with 20 km left in the race on the Champs-Élysées, I got off my bike, stopped, and waited for my team car to bring me a jacket.
It is hard to describe how inhumane and awful it feels riding down the cobbles of the Champs at 70 km/h. After 20 days of consecutive riding, you have saddle sores, aches, and, as the Aussies say, serious “CBF” (couldn’t be fucked). The backstretch from the top of l’Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde rattles you to your core. Oddly, one of the most centered moments I have ever had in my life was smashing around the cobbles of this final stage. The incessant banging shakes you so much that all I could feel or think of was that moment—nothing before or after.
One year, I had my saddle completely break off coming down this stretch. Most times, as we come ripping down this wide boulevard, something breaks off someone’s bike. Manufacturers didn’t design the bikes we race on with this terrain in mind. As you hurtle down the backstretch with debris and bottles flying off bikes all around you, as a climber, only the adrenaline of being in the final stage of the world’s biggest bike race makes you block out how ridiculous this moment feels.
Knowing I had no skin left in the game and only skin left to lose — skin that was goose-pimpled and exposed to the pouring rain — I thought, “Why suffer more?” Putting on a rain jacket while riding on roads that were greasier than my 16-year-old self’s forehead at 70 km/h was a risk I was no longer willing to take, so I stopped. Right in the middle of the Champs. As fans looked at me in bewilderment, I treated myself to what felt like an extreme luxury. I put on my rain jacket and looked around, knowing I was dead last on the road. By the time I was fully zipped up, the peloton and caravan were long gone, and I could finally ride at peace.
This was one of the best decisions I made in the Tour de France. I was able to ride at my own pace on some of the busiest and most storied roads on the planet. I cruised up Montmartre as thousands of soaked fans cheered me on, and finally, I caught several riders, including Olympic track champ Benjamin Thomas. We rode the final kilometers together, smiling, recognizing how lucky we were to be getting paid to do this. As we crossed the line, we shook hands, congratulated each other, and went our separate ways.
That was it — that is how I ended it.
I flew back to Canada a week later with my family, in some of the best form of my life. The post-Tour bump is real, and I cruised around the gravel roads north of Ottawa at speeds I had never sustained before. Nothing seemed to faze me. I averaged 37 km/h for over six hours on a gravel bike on my way back from a camping trip in Mont Tremblant. By this point, I knew I was going to retire, but visions of not beating Pogačar, but at least being the best of the rest at my final home race in Montreal danced in my head. This was how I wanted to retire. In 2014, I raced in Montreal on the national team, and as a guy who had just started riding two years earlier, I finished in the front group among some of the best riders in the world. It helped launch my career and get me a spot in the World Tour. Finishing things off in Montreal, in front of my family and friends, racing at the top of my game was “how I was meant to finish.”
For every storybook ending to a career, You’ll see thousands that don’t follow the same trajectory. Those epic endings make it into books and movies because they are unique. Mine, at least for road cycling, wouldn’t end like this.
Instead of sinking beers on Rue St. Catherine post-race, I found myself sitting at a dinner table in the Shouldice Hernia Hospital with a bunch of men my dad’s age, discussing our impending hernia surgeries and retirements. An inguinal hernia, which I had been nursing since the start of the season, had worsened after the Tour, and in the weeks prior to what should have been my final race, I could no longer push back the golf ball-sized protrusion. The pain worsened to the point that riding was no longer viable, and my career as a pro cyclist ended with a whimper.
Since I started cycling at such a late age and never envisioned riding for as long as I did, the idea of retirement was something I was constantly aware of. Having also lived a life outside of the sport and dealt with the end of another sporting career, I was confident that my retirement would only bring me great satisfaction. Instead, it brought the opposite.
There was a funeral without a casket. My cycling career was lost at sea, and over the past few months, instead of relishing the accomplishments I had on the bike, I dwelled on where I had gone wrong. This is not my style. I’m not a person who lives in the past. I could only sulk around for so long, and as I got over a poor ending to one career, I started hatching plans for another.
Life is about living, not spending your days mulling over what could have been. I’m a firm believer that one of the most beautiful things you can do in life is challenge yourself. It is to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. Fifteen years ago, I did that in cycling, and the years that followed proved to be some of the most exciting and fulfilling years of my life.
Now, at 39, I feel as though, physically, I have a few more years left in the tank. I had a contract for the next season, but to do another year in the WorldTour would have been a disservice to this mantra. I want to challenge myself again. I want to put myself outside of my comfort zone and try to compete in and against the best endurance athletes across a range of disciplines. I present to you Way to Race:
In collaboration with Ventum Bikes and some amazing sponsors, over the course of 2026, I will be taking on a range of endurance disciplines: triathlon, gravel, MTB marathon, and skimo. The aim is to see how, after 15 years of building an aerobic base in one sport, I stack up against the best endurance athletes across a number of disciplines.
Pierra Menta, Ironman, Leadville, Unbound, and many other events will feature on my calendar. Will my body hold up to the test of an Ironman? How does a WorldTour pro stack up in the social media/influencer world of privateers? As it makes its first appearance in the Olympic Games, what is the sport of skimo? Is the Tour actually the world’s hardest endurance event? These are just a few of the questions I hope to answer during 2026, so whether it’s via this blog, on my Instagram, or in my YouTube channel, you can follow along as I tell the stories of people intrinsically involved in each sport, share my journey into the deep end of each discipline, and see what it’s like to take on this ambitious calendar.
