Michel Brazeau: The Quiet Champion

MICHEL BRAZEAU, CYCLING CLUB COACH

Michel Brazeau is entering his third year as a coach for the ZVP Opto-Réseau cycling club at the Centre Multisports. Originally from Rigaud, he returned to the Vaudreuil region after living away for some time, settling in Coteau-du-Lac to raise his now five-year-old son. Around the same time, he was invited to share his cycling expertise and passion with youth. It was a fitting move—Brazeau had long dreamed of teaching, and he carried with him the titles of Canadian time trial champion and four-time Quebec time trial champion. But beyond the accolades, Michel Brazeau is, above all, a passionate cyclist, a respected motivator, and a man who prefers discretion when it comes to performance. Here’s a glimpse into Coach Brazeau’s world.

Buttoning His Pants

Coming from a triathlon background, Brazeau turned to cycling as an intense training regimen in the early 2000s. Entering his thirties, he was determined to fit into his pants properly again:

“In January, the buttons on my pants were popping because I had stopped training for about ten years,” he recalls.
Avid cyclist alongside his partner, he first joined a cycling club and then discovered racing. Success followed quickly—he won the Canadian time trial championship in 2006 in the veteran category. While he still races, he now seeks life balance:
“Cycling once took up too much space in my life. When people become too obsessed with a sport, they wake up thinking about training, eating, and their next race. I went through that phase. Today, if you take cycling away from me, I’ll just replace it with something else.”
That philosophy shapes how he teaches young riders: encouraging them to find their passion at their own pace.

Discovering Passion

Brazeau coaches kids aged 9 to 16—once a week in winter, twice in summer. And he loves it:

“I’m more of a motivator than a drill sergeant,” he says. “I want to bring out the best in everyone. Find what they enjoy, what needs work, and make the sport fun. Patience and motivation are key.”
He believes youth athletes can improve rapidly, sometimes surpassing adults in power by the age of 13 or 14. His approach is to build commitment through passion:
“I want each athlete to find their passion and their own path. If they don’t, maybe they need to look elsewhere. My role is to make the sport engaging and help them get hooked. That’s how I was raised, and it’s how I teach. Once they’ve found their passion, their progress is incredible.”

In the end, Brazeau is a firm believer in sports as a path to a better lifestyle—one that fills fitness centers, not clinics:

“Once you’ve adopted this way of life, it’s really not that complicated,” he adds, lamenting how modern life sees parents rushing everywhere and nowhere.
Living simply, living healthy—that’s the philosophy of this quiet champion who always makes himself heard by those lucky enough to learn from him.