The final stage of the Tour of Alberta was held as a circuit race in Edmonton – the capital city of Alberta.
As expected, the start of the 124 kilometers was very hectic as more valuable points in the mountain and sprint classification were to win. Cesare Benedetti, before the start only 1 point behind the wearer of the KOM jersey, jumped into the lead group for the third time. The 28-year-old Italian scored the second place on all three climbs of the day, while he won the last intermediate sprint.
On the penultimate of the eleven laps the field was only 30 seconds behind the eight escapees. So the leaders took this chance to attack each other. Benedetti was caught by the field as the last breakaway rider just before the start of the final lap. With his aggressive riding style, he secured the award as the most competitive rider.
A compact field entered the last 10 kilometers. The entire BORA – ARGON 18 squad rode at the front of the peloton to prepare the bunch sprint for Sam Bennett. While Nikias Arndt (Giant - Alpecin) won the race, Bennett sprinted to 5th place. Paul Voss defended the 8th place in the overall standings.
"Initially, everything went according to plan today. Cesare should get into the group of the day, and he managed to do that. With this move we wanted not only to take the rest of the team from the responsibility for the chase, but to give Cesare the chance to secure the KOM jersey. In the end, his ride wasn’t rewarded with this jersey, but with the one for the most aggressive rider. The sprint preparation for Sam wasn’t perfect unfortunately. I assume the guys were much too early in front and thus they couldn’t realize an optimal lead-out. We’ll analyze it exactly in the next few days and I hope we’ll do better in the next two races in Canada", concludes Christian Pömer the final stage.
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