Uran wins Grand Prix Quebec

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Rigoberto Uran (Etixx-QuickStep) pulled off an audacious attack to win the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec, going solo with 500m to go and then holding off a frenetic chase from the sprinters behind. Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) edged out Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) in a photo finish for the last two podium spots.

“We had a super strong team with riders like [Michal] Kwiatkowski and [Julian] Alaphilippe, who were very active in the race," Uran said. "Our tactic was to wait for the last kilometre and then have a go at it, and that is what we did, and it worked.”

Although Uran has had a stand-out season filled with top-10 stage finishes in the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France, the victory in Quebec was his first since he claimed the Colombian time trial title in January. When asked if his win was a gift to Etixx-QuickStep manager Patrick Lefevere, Uran said, “Next year I am changing teams but I have a contract with Etixx-QuickStep until the end of December and as a professional rider I fulfil my contract until the very end.”

Matthews was pleased with second place and congratulated Uran on his hard-earned victory saying that, “I’m happy with the result. This is my first attempt at trying to win this race and I think that second place in my first attempt is quite a good result. More than that, my legs were really good today, it was just a little bit unfortunate in the final that Uran got away solo and took away the win from the bunch. He done an awesome ride and you can’t really say much when someone can ride away solo like that after 200km.”

How it happened

On Friday the international peloton lined up along the Grande Allée for the sixth edition of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec. The race was routed through the heart of the 400-year-old, walled-in city and inside parts of the Parc des Champs-de-Bataille (Plains of Abraham), a historic national battlefield, then down to Boulevard Champlain and alongside the Saint Lawrence River.

The peloton embarked on a battle of its own over the course of 16 laps of a 12.6km circuit for a total of 201.6km. The challenging parcours offered several climbs including the steep Rue de la Montagne, which was the mountain prime, the Cote de la Potasse and on the long drag to the finish line along the Grande Allée.

An early breakaway included Perrig Quemmeneur (Team Europcar), Cesar Benedetti (Bora-Argon 18), Darren Lapthorne and Wouter Wippert (Drapac) along with a pair of Canadians Adam de Vos and Ryan Roth. An untimely mechanical forced Wippert to stop at the side of the road and he wasn’t able to get back into the breakaway.

The breakaway rolled on at just over eight minutes ahead of the peloton, which was mainly led by Trek Factory Racing and BMC Racing with 150km to go. The seven riders spent more than three quarters of the race working hard out front but they steadily lost time to the field as the race wore on, and with the exception of Benedetti and Roth, they were eventually reeled back in with roughly 45km to go.

Philippe Gilbert (BMC) put in an attack from the peloton that would be the start of the late-race activity during the last 40km of the race. Meanwhile, an unfortunate crash brought down Bernhard Eisel. The Team Sky rider later posted a photo of himself with his arm in a sling, and said he had suffered a broken left arm.

Several counter attacks led to a new chase group with Katusha’s Viacheslav Kuznetsov and Lotto Soudal’s Lars Bak, who bridged across to the last remaining breakaway rider, Roth.

The trio were later joined by a larger chase group that included Silvan Dillier and Philippe Gilbert (BMC Racing), Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx-QuickStep), Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff-Saxo), Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin), Fabio Felline (Trek Factory Racing), Rein Taaramae (Astana), Romain Bardet (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto Soudal) and Arnaud Demare (FDJ).

Although the move looked promising, the riders were brought back into the field with one lap and a half to go (16km), along the Boulevard Champlain. The next two riders to attack were Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) and Wilco Kelderman (LottoNL-Jumbo) and the pair cleared the field by roughly 20 seconds.

They were brought back, and an attack from Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) with 4km to go lured out world champion Kwiatkowski, splitting off a dozen riders from the peloton that included Gilbert.

Former world Hour Record holder Matthias Braendle (IAM Cycling) took the race by the horns with 2.5km to go on the steepest pitch of the final climb, but his move only served to set up the counter by Etixx-QuickStep's Alaphilippe. He was chased down by former race winner Robert Gesink (LottoNl-Jumbo) with a kilometre to go.

Uran then countered as BMC was left to do the chasing in the long uphill drag to the line. They could not catch the flying Colombian, and he gave his team a double after Matteo Trentin's win in Britain.

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