February 12, 2007 – The Montreal-Boston race scheduled for August 5-12 now has a spokesman “who loves both cities”. Raymond Bourque, the retired captain of the Boston Bruins hockey team, accepted this role at a ceremony in Boston on February 5th according to the Journal to Montreal. And more than being well-known in both cities, Bourque professes to be an ardent cyclist.

“Cycling was always an important part of my training between (hockey) seasons,” he told the Journal, adding that he doesn’t know how many kilometers he rode during his 22 seasons of hockey, but the total distance would be very high.

Boston Mayor, Thomas Menino, presented Bourque with a cycling jersey from Italy’s national team. Among those present were Montreal-Boston organizer, Daniel Manibal, and Jean-Marc Fournier, Quebec’s Minister for Sports and Leisure.