The Frenchman earns the best climber of the race award.
Sun, a clear blue sky and thousands of fans lined up the streets welcomed the international peloton at the start of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec, one of the few World Tour one-day races left on the calendar this season, and for many riders, an important step ahead of the World Championships which are to be held in Yorkshire later this month.
A break took quickly shape on the opening lap of the 201.6km-long event, but despite building an eight-minute advantage, they didn’t pose any real problem to a bunch where Deceuninck – Quick-Step were highly prominent. Our team was among the ones chasing the sextet, before going into aggressive mode, which resulted in accelerations of Enric Mas and Pieter Serry, whose attacks, although brief, left their mark over the tired field.
On the intense and thrilling last lap, when the break was already history, Dries Devenyns took over the front and softened up the strung-out bunch with three kilometers to go, paving the way for an attack of Julian Alaphilippe. The leader of the UCI World Individual Classification kicked out of the group on Montée de la Fabrique (190 meters, 7%) and was joined by four men, a move which looked to be the decisive one. The five-rider group exchanged turns and possessed a ten-second buffer going into the last kilometer, where some of them stopped working, thus allowing the peloton to come across just within sight of the finish line.
In a last-ditch effort, Julian opened his sprint with 300 meters to go on the uphill drag to the line, but the effort he had put in until then took its toll and he was overtaken, concluding the race won by Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) in seventh place. It was the first time in four participations that the 27-year-old Frenchman cracked the top 10 at the Canadian race, a more than encouraging result – in addition to which he took home also the trophy for the race’s best climber – considering that this was just his seventh day of racing since completing a stellar, but exhausting Tour de France six weeks ago.
From here, our team will travel to the city where Eddy Merckx took his third and last rainbow jersey, for Sunday’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal.
Photo credit: ©Luc Claessen/ Getty Images
Julian Alaphilippe 
