Canada’s big La Belle Province UCI WorldTour weekend began on Friday with Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec, where Michael “Bling” Matthews earned a hat trick of wins. The action was hot in the final couple of kilometres of the race, but the 33-year-old Australian outsprinted Biniam Girmay and Rudy Molard for the victory. Guillaume Boivin was top Canadian for the third year in a row at 31st.
The Course
The route consisted of sixteen 12.6-km city laps each containing the 400-metre, 6.3 percent climb up Côte des Glacis, where the finish line would come after 201.6 km. Previous editions usually took 4:45.
🏁 RACE DETAILS ⤵️
🇨🇦Gp de Quebec
⏰ 11am (5pm CEST)
↔️ 201.6km
🔄 16x laps
#️⃣ #GPCQM pic.twitter.com/vKIhC9DBdi— GreenEDGE Cycling (@GreenEDGEteam) September 13, 2024
The Canadian contingent was James Piccoli, Quentin Cowan, Jérôme Gauthier, Jonas Walton, Léonard Peloquin, Félix Bouchard, and Félix Hamel on the national team; Derek Gee, national champion Michael Woods, Hugo Houle and Guillaume Boivin on Israel-Premier Tech and Michael Leonard on Ineos.
A breakaway slipped the surly bonds of the peloton early. Walton and Hamel made the cut, Walton winning the first KOM point on Glacis. After six laps Walton, Hamel and Frank van den Broek were tied with two KOM points a piece and the peloton was +5:25.
Walton couldn’t hang on into Lap 7 and would climb off the bike 40 km later. The remaining trio hit the midway point of the race 4:50 ahead of the field. Hamel didn’t make it into Lap 10. Frank van den Broek carried on with Artem Shmidt.
With five laps to go and the peloton stretched out, riders began to try moves off the front. Ben Healy, Anders Halland Johannessen and Fredrik Dversnes all made surges, but work from teams like Bahrain-Victorious brought them back. UAE-Emirates riders put their backs into it, streamlining the pack. Soudal-QuickStep raced with intent too. Still the gap was 3:55 with 40 km remaining.
#GPCQM🇨🇦
2 laps to go and it’s been a really strong effort so far from Frank van den Broek and Shmidt who lead the chasing bunch by 1’22” with 25km remaining 👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/sxZGQnbrxk
— Team dsm-firmenich PostNL (@dsmfirmpostnl) September 13, 2024
Belgian Gil Gilders and Frenchman Alex Baudin lit out after…
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