Tadej Pogacar is inevitable. Although he was denied in Quebec on Friday, this Sunday at the GP de Montréal there has been no stopping the Slovenian, who heads to the upcoming Zurich World Championship in race winning form.
Three riders got themselves up the road early on. With 40 kilometres raced, the trio of Michael Leonard (INEOS Grenadiers), Gil Gelders (Soudal – Quick-Step) and Dries De Bondt (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) had over five and a half minutes advantage over the peloton.
UAE Team Emirates were controlling things at the front of the peloton and sensing the gap growing larger, they quickly upped the pace. Despite there still being way over 100km left, the acceleration of UAE Team Emirates quickly knocked three minutes off the leading trio’s advantage.
With 50km to go, Leonard and Gelders were still dangling tantalisingly in front of the peloton by around 30 seconds, when they were joined by a counter attacking Matej Mohoric. Soon after, Leonard too was caught by the peloton, leaving just Gelders and Mohoric clear heading into the final 45km.
With 36km to go, Gelders and Mohoric’s attacks were over and things were all together at the front again heading towards the finale. After a momentary lull in the action afterwards, the racing sparked back into life with the big expected attack from Tadej Pogacar with around 23km to go. With 20km to go, the Slovenian had already put in over 20 seconds on his rivals.
Although the likes of Julian Alaphilippe and Pello Bilbao were leading the chase behind, the gap to Pogacar was only growing and with 10km to go, the UAE Team Emirates leader was clear by 30 seconds from a chase group of four (Bilbao, Alaphilippe, Bart Lemmen and Alex Aranburu), with peloton now almost a minute down.
And as you might expect from that kind of position, it was Pogacar who ran out the dominant winner, with Bilbao holding off the chasing pack for second.
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