Twelve months ago, Mike Woods was done. WorldTour racing had become more like a job than a passion, he had spent his final year hampered by crashes and injuries, and to top it all off, a hernia meant he wouldn’t get to bow out at his home race at the GP de Montréal like he had hoped.
The cycling career he’d changed paths for later in life, that saw him win four Grand Tour stages, wasn’t going to end on a high. Most riders want to choose how, when and where they end their career, but for many, that simply doesn’t work out. Woods looked set to join the latter camp.
Except, as it turns out, that wasn’t the end. Woods’ ‘retirement’ did not mean hanging his wheels up for good, as he took the end of his WorldTour contract as a chance to pick up his gravel bike, racing events like The Traka, the Sea Otter Classic and the Gravel World Series as he made a transition away from racing, rather than a hard stop.
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And very quickly, an opportunity arose: with the points he’d accrued in his final year, he might be able to qualify for selection for the Road World Championships. Held in 2026 in Montreal, Canada, it was an almost perfect chance to do over the road swansong he’d been denied in 2025.
“It’s been in the back of my head for most of this year,” Woods told Cyclingnews last week in Quebec, lining up for Team Canada in the GPs de Québec and Montréal ahead of his Worlds finale.
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“I really wanted to end my career in Montreal. Last year I couldn’t do that because I had a hernia and I had to have surgery, and I was devastated. It was like such an anticlimactic ending to a career. Not that anyone deserves [the perfect ending], and not that I deserved it, but I wanted to finish things off in Canada.
“Then when I looked at the selection criteria, and realised that I still had scored enough points last year to be eligible, I thought that if I maintained a certain level of fitness and really felt like I could prove that, then, I wanted to go to these races. Then I did [Road] National Championships and it was good [he finished seventh] and I knew after that I could provide a lot of value to the team at Worlds, and here we are.”
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Woods finished as the best Canadian in the GP de Montréal (Image credit: Getty Images)
A hope and a plan nearly a year in the making, Woods only got the call for certain in August, with the GPs de Québec and Montréal thrown in as openers, but he’s felt ready for this return to the highest level of road racing for several weeks.
“Only about a month ago, within the last month when we made the official selection. I wasn’t informed before,” he explained. “But after the National Championships, I finished seventh, but, with the way the course was – it wasn’t a very hard course – I proved I was definitely the second strongest climber in the race. I wouldn’t want to come here if I wasn’t going to contribute to the national team, but after doing that race I felt like ‘Oh, I definitely will be valuable’.”
The initial plan was for Woods to work for Canada’s chosen leader, Derek Gee-West, but with the Lidl-Trek rider withdrawing from Sunday’s road race after a crash at the GP de Montréal, the door has perhaps opened for Woods to use his strength for something exciting.
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“I really want to go as far into the race as I can, or even try and do something special,” he said. “I just want the national team and the maple leaf to have success at this race.”
From ‘jaded’ to rekindling his love of racing
In many ways, the year-long delay to Woods’ Montreal farewell might be a blessing in disguise.
The 39-year-old who is preparing to line up for Sunday’s road race is very different from the 38-year-old who stepped out of the peloton in 2025, and that time and space has given him a new-found appreciation for the sport – and perhaps even the ability to enjoy his final road races more than he would have 12 months ago.
“I was pretty jaded by the end of last year,” he said. “Last year particularly, I had my hernia, I had crashed. I went to an altitude camp in Tenerife, got in amazing shape, really felt like I was going to have a good year, and then crashed taking a leg warmer off in Milano-Torino, broke my collarbone, woke up in an ambulance. After that, I was over it.
The 2025 Tour de France ended up being Woods’ last race on the road as a professional (Image credit: Getty Images)
“But this year has rekindled my love for the sport, made me realise how much I love racing. Watching the races on TV makes me realise how beautiful the sport was, and makes me really proud of what I did. I haven’t missed it at all, but it’s been a great year.”
Racing all across Europe, the United States and Canada this year, the headlines reading that Woods was ‘coming out of retirement’ for the World Championships didn’t exactly ring true, given he’s hardly stopped this year, but he was clear that this season has been nothing like the ones that came before it.
“I’ve definitely been retired from the WorldTour. The WorldTour is a different beast, 70 race days, it’s not just performing once or twice every few weeks, it’s just this grind. So I’ve been retired from that,” he said.
“Doing what I did this year has been so fun. It has been, I’d say, a retirement. I’m doing exactly what I want to do whenever I want to, which has been sweet. So I’ve definitely retired. But fortunately, it’s kept me in good enough shape to be competitive at a high level.”
Coming back to road racing for the GPs de Quebec and Montreal – where he finished 66th and 18th respectively – Woods had a chance to reacclimatise with the WorldTour peloton before taking on the World Championships road race. Being back in the world he left
“It’s weird. It’s cool. It’s super cool,” he said. “It amazes me. I used to feel like such an imposter at these races because I came in so late. I didn’t do years of racing junior and then U23, or accruing relationships. I just came into the WorldTour and knew nothing. It felt like I was just like playing – this is going to date me – but like Age of Empires when everything is just dark. I didn’t know anything.
“And now I come here and I know everybody. I know guys on every single team. I’m chatting with everybody, staff included – there’s directors that I used to race with – so it’s weird to now realise that I’m not an imposter.”
Despite coming late to the sport, Woods ended his career with a Tour de France stage amongst his victories (Image credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
Riding with the national team in Quebec and Montreal also offered Woods a chance to act as the experienced head in a team of young riders, both sharing his expertise and affirming to himself that the future of the sport is in safe hands.
“It’s been awesome. When I first started at these races I was in a similar position, just hungry, chasing a $10,000 contract, trying to move up, and, it’s nice to be around that energy again,” he said. “Everyone’s like 20 years younger than me. I’m learning from these guys, like the way the sport is now. There’s so much access to information and these guys are so switched on that even me, who’s been doing it for quite a few years now, I’m learning from them.”
“Now I feel like an imposter in a different way!” he laughed. “I’m like, I have a wife, I have kids, I have a house. I’m in a way different state or place than these guys, but it’s a nice change of perspective.”
Woods joined the national selection at the Canadian GPs (Image credit: Getty Images)
After the World Championships, this chapter is over, Woods is certain. He’s not going to get sucked into the ever more competitive and more professional world of gravel. He won’t be jetting off to Australia for Gravel World Championships after Montreal, and swapping the road grind for the gravel one isn’t his idea of fun.
“That’s been my life for the last 15 years. It’s just chasing contracts, chasing points, chasing results for a team, sponsorship pressure, and this year wasn’t that, and it was really nice,” he said. “It is hard, it’s not like it’s smooth sailing for a lot of the privateers, it’s a lot of work.”
But whilst he’s sure that “that’s it forever” as far as trying to be a professional, competitive athlete goes, nothing will ever stop Woods from riding, and if anything, this bonus year and serendipitous perfect ending has only reaffirmed that love.
“I’ll race and ride my bike for the rest of my life. I love it,” he said. “There’s a reason why I did what I did this year. I’m an addict to exercise and physical activity. I’m a much worse person when I’m not doing them. I’m in love with it, I’m in love with the bike. I’ll ride for the rest of my life, just a lot less competitively in the years to come.”
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