Julian Alaphilippe was caught inside the last 200 meters, after an all-out attack on the final lap.
Running its tenth edition, this year’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal was a tougher even than in the past seasons, after the organisers decided to add two extra laps that extended the distance of the penultimate World Tour one-day race of the calendar to nearly 220 kilometers. The effects of this change could be seen midway through the race, when several riders lost contact with a peloton which gradually increased the tempo behind the five-man breakaway on the three climbs of each lap: Côte Camillien-Houde, Côte de Polytechnique and Avenue du Parc.
UCI World Team Classification leader Deceuninck – Quick-Step were one of the teams to turn on the gas going into the final laps, launching successive attacks with Pieter Serry and Remco Evenepoel, one of the best neo-pros of the year, whose brutal accelerations ended up doing some serious damage to the bunch. Enric Mas was another member of the Wolfpack to feature at the front, on twice occasions, the second of which came with ten kilometers to go, when he shot out of the reduced pack together with Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal) and rode in pursuit of lone leader Benoit Cosnefroy (AG2R).
While they eroded the gap to the Frenchman, the chasers also pushed hard and managed to make up ground and link up with the duo with three kilometers remaining, sparking a brutal attack of Julian Alaphilippe, who carved out a small advantage and joined his countryman at the front, together with whom he rode under the flamme rouge in Montreal.
Five seconds had the duo in hand as they began tackling the final hill of the race, but the effort put in up until that point of the race and the concerted chase of the rather large group behind saw them get pulled back agonizingly close to the line, despite Julian opening his sprint with 250 meters remaining. Eventually, the 27-year-old finished in 13th place, as one of Deceuninck – Quick-Step’s three riders inside the top 20.
“We didn’t get the results we wanted here in Canada, but this doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good weekend for the team. We had the possibility to see our riders’ condition ahead of the last races of the season, and of course, of the World Championships in Yorkshire. The team worked really well and stuck to the plan, trying to make the races hard by going on the attack and featuring in the finale in both Quebec and Montreal, but that’s cycling: you can’t win every day”, sports director Davide Bramati commented after the race.
Photo credit: ©Luc Claessen/ Getty Images
