Some shocking news about several Canadian women who will be ditching the red and white of Canada for the blue, brown, yellow and red of Belgium.<\/p>\n
The news had been rumours until an email from Cycling Canada confirmed that three Canadians were switching their licences in a last-gasp attempt to race the Montreal road worlds.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s basically unprecedented for a rider to do so mid-season, but apparently the UCI has granted an exemption due to extenuating circumstances. The situation? There are too many strong Canadians racing in the women\u2019s pro peloton.<\/p>\n
The ol\u2019 switcheroo<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not totally uncommon for an athlete to \u201cswap\u201d countries in order to make the team for major events. At the recent 2026 Winter Olympics, there were nine Canadian-born players, two U.S. players and one Swedish player competing for the Squadra Azzurra. Recently in cycling, we\u2019ve seen a few cases at home.<\/p>\n
Jonas Walton, son of Brian and Dana, and a dual citizen, originally began racing with a U.S. licence, even becoming national champion and breaking the U.S. hour record as a junior<\/a>. However, in 2023, he moved over to a Canadian one. Since then he\u2019s ridden with the national team, even getting an impressive sixth at the road worlds in 2025.<\/p>\n How do you say \u201celbows up\u201d in Flemish?<\/p>\n A year later, the inverse occurred when Ashlin Barry, now riding for Visma \u2013 Lease a Bike<\/a>, swapped his Canadian licence for an American one. Barry<\/a>, also a dual citizen, son of Dede and Michael, raced for the Canadian national team, snagging several championships too. However, over the past few years he\u2019s been racing for USA Cycling, as well as becoming a multiple American national champ.<\/p>\n Although the three riders have not been named, Cycling Canada\u2019s Kris Westwood said he was aware who they were. He said it has still been under wraps as the UCI originally was not willing to grant the early-season licence change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe three women all approached us in February, saying they were very sorry but they didn\u2019t think that racing with a Canadian licence was any longer feasible, due to the depth of talent in the women\u2019s fields,\u201d Westwood said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s definitely true, Canadian women have been absolutely killing it recently. Canada crowned its first ever elite world champion in Rwanda in September through Magdeleine Valli\u00e8res Mill<\/a>. Alison Jackson won Paris-Roubaix, Isabella Holmgren is a multiple world champion and winner of the Tour de l\u2019Avenir, just to name a few.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pity to lose these talented women, but maybe in some weird way we can take it as a compliment to the depth of talent in cycling right now,\u201d Westwood said. He added that one of the women was bummed to not be able to race in Montreal in red and white, but that the blue jersey of Belgium \u201ckinda looks like the old national team jersey.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Some big news to start the month of April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some shocking news about several Canadian women who will be ditching the red and white of Canada for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[220587,92133,49,48,635,220588,2338,82],"class_list":["post-574371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2026-road-worlds","tag-alison-jackson","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-magdeleine-vallieres-mills","tag-montreal","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}