CYCLING – TEAM Bahrain Victorious rider Matej Mohoric claimed an impressive fifth-place finish early yesterday morning in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec.
The 216-kilometre elite men’s road race was the first of two late-season UCI World Tour events in Canada. Montreal hosts the second today, which is shorter at 209km, but far more challenging.
The Quebec route comprised 18 laps of a 12.6km city circuit, each of which contained the Cote de la Montagne, whose summit was also the finish line.
As expected, a breakaway formed early, and the gap grew to more than six minutes, with Mohoric bridging across to them with 12 of the 18 laps remaining.
The decisive move came with around 75km to go, as a very strong group of seven went clear. As well as Mohoric, they included the eventual winner, former world champion Julian Alaphilippe of TUD, Mattias Skjelmose of LTK, Pavel Sivakov of UAD, and Alberto Bettiol of XAT.
On the final climb, Alaphilippe attacked from that group and resisted the chase behind from Sivakov, who finished second, and Bettiol, who finished third. Matej crossed the line in fifth, just behind Skjelmose.Bahrain Victorious’ Fred Wright and Edoardo Zambanini joined Mohoric in the top 20 by taking 15th and 18th, respectively.
Mohoric was happy to be finding some late-season form. “Today, I actually had really good legs,” he said.
“We raced well as a team in the first part, and I conserved a lot of energy thanks to Nikki [Ardnt] and Fran [Miholjevic], who helped us out there with positioning and we could save our bullets for the final.”Then, when the attacks started, our plan was for me to follow the first big move, and although I was a bit late, I managed to then bridge over to the attackers. That cost me a little bit of energy, but I managed to recover afterwards and then survived the selections on the following laps over the climb, and then in the last lap, I was pretty close to fight for podium, but came up a little bit short.
“Still, fifth place is a good result, and I’m happy I did the best I could do today. It is also a good result for team spirit with regards to Sunday, which probably suits us better as a team.”
“So we are looking forward to Montreal, Afonso [Eulalio] is feeling well. Pello [Bilbao] was not at his best today, but I think he will be up there on Sunday, and we have a strong team. We can look forward to it.”
Bahrain Victorious’ lead sports director in Canada Michal Golas added: “I’m glad we stuck to the plan. Matej took his chance in that late breakaway, and he did a really, really great job. Also, the key was that we had Afonso in the other group. So, the key takeaway is that the boys stuck to the plan in that part of the race.
“I felt like that would be the move to make it to the finish line. I think we raced pretty well all the time and we really stuck to our plan, so that’s great.”
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