Arnaud De Lie will miss both the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal after failing to recover sufficiently from the illness that ended his Renewi Tour early.
Lotto-Intermarché confirmed on Monday that De Lie will not travel to Canada for GP Québec on Friday 11 September or GP Montréal on Sunday 13 September, removing one of the most obvious contenders from the first race of the Canadian WorldTour double-header.
The 24-year-old won GP Québec in 2023, when he beat Corbin Strong and Michael Matthews in the uphill sprint to claim one of the biggest victories of his career.
“Unfortunately, Arnaud De Lie will not be at the start of the GP de Québec on Friday, a race he won three years ago, or the GP de Montréal on Sunday.”
Lotto-Intermarché said De Lie has not recovered sufficiently after falling ill during the Renewi Tour and has subsequently been unable to build properly towards the Canadian races.
De Lie has not raced since the Renewi Tour
De Lie’s illness became apparent during the closing stages of the Renewi Tour in August.
He had returned to the race as defending champion and one of the leading overall contenders, but did not start the final stage in Leuven because of illness.
His absence was significant given what he had achieved on the same roads 12 months earlier, when he won the final stage and overturned Mathieu van der Poel’s advantage to claim the 2025 overall title.
The Renewi Tour Stage 5 race report covered De Lie’s withdrawal before Jasper Philipsen went on to win both the Leuven finale and the overall classification.
Lotto had hoped the time between the Renewi Tour and the Canadian races would be enough for De Lie to recover. That has not happened.
The team said:
“We hope to have Arnaud back with the team soon for the final part of the season and wish him a speedy recovery.”
No new return date has been announced.
GP Québec was one of De Lie’s best remaining opportunities
Missing Québec is particularly frustrating for De Lie because its circuit is exceptionally well suited to him.
The race combines repeated short climbs with a fast uphill finish, rewarding riders who can absorb more than 200km of attritional racing while retaining enough speed for the final sprint.
De Lie proved he could do exactly that in 2023.
He survived the repeated climbing and then powered clear in the finish to beat Strong and Matthews, becoming one of the youngest winners in the history of the race.
Our brief history of GP Québec looks at how that victory fitted into a winners list that ranges from Classics sprinters to attacking puncheurs.
The 2026 GP Québec route should again have suited De Lie. This year’s race uses a shorter 10.3km circuit but increases the number of laps to 20, producing approximately 2,780 metres of climbing before the final approach on the Plains of Abraham.
At full fitness, De Lie would have been one of the riders capable of surviving that accumulation and still contesting the finish.
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Photo Credit: Getty
Montréal would have been a very different test
GP Montréal is much less naturally suited to De Lie.
Sunday’s race covers 214.4km and more than 4,300 metres of climbing across 16 laps around Mount Royal. The repeated ascents of Camillien-Houde and the Côte de la Polytechnique make it one of the hardest one-day races on the WorldTour calendar.
The GP Montréal 2026 route guide explains why the new circuit is likely to favour climbers and the strongest Classics riders rather than conventional sprinters.
This year’s edition also carries unusual importance because many of the same roads will be used during the UCI Road World Championships later in September.
For De Lie, Montréal would therefore have been valuable even without a realistic expectation of winning. It offered a competitive look at the World Championships terrain and an opportunity to rebuild after his disrupted August.
He will now miss both.
Another interruption in De Lie’s final season with Lotto
The setback comes during De Lie’s final months with Lotto-Intermarché.
The Belgian team confirmed in August that De Lie will leave at the end of the 2026 season, bringing his six-year association with the organisation to an end.
He progressed through Lotto’s development structure before becoming one of its leading professional riders, accumulating 35 victories and winning at WorldTour level.
That made the closing months of 2026 an opportunity to finish the partnership with another major result.
The Canadian races looked particularly important within that programme. Québec offered a return to the scene of one of his biggest victories, while Montréal provided another high-level race before the final part of the European season.
Instead, recovery remains the immediate priority.
Lotto-Intermarché have stopped short of ruling De Lie out for the rest of the year, but the wording of Monday’s update makes clear that there is no value in rushing him back before he is capable of training and racing properly again.
For GP Québec, his absence removes a former winner and one of the strongest riders for the uphill finish before the Canadian WorldTour weekend has even begun.
