Tom Dumoulin led the Tour of Alberta from the opening prologue but lost it all in the final sprint when Daryl Impey took 10 bonus seconds. Having lost the race with the tiniest of margins, the Dutchman couldn't believe that he had once again finished second in a race.

Tom Dumoulin has lost his overall lead on the sixth and final day of racing at the Tour of Alberta, with the one result in the sprint finish that would overhaul his lead happening.

After a hard-fought wet circuit race that saw Simon Geschke in the day’s breakaway covering the team’s interests at the head of affairs, a select group came into the finish to decide the stage win with a sprint. It was Daryl Impey (Orica GreenEDGE) who took the race and with the ten second time bonus on the line he did enough to also take the overall race lead by a mere one second from Dumoulin .

Georg Preidler was the first of the team to get up the road, moving clear early on with one other rider to take the front two places at the first intermediate sprint. With Jonas Ahlstrand taking third behind that was how the team decided to protect the overall lead early on.

This break eventually came back into the fold and it was then that the day’s main break formed, with 11 riders getting clear including Simon Geschke for Team Giant-Shimano.

With Geschke lying in 12th going into the stage this meant that he was  the virtual leader on the road and it took the pressure off Dumoulin and the chase behind.

The race was to all come back together once again though, and with the rolling nature of the circuit, combined with the wet corners and technical roads the front group was thinned down to around 20-30 riders, but importantly including at least five Team Giant-Shimano jerseys.

On the final climb of the day, Dumoulin decided to test his rivals, putting in a big attack that pulled several others clear, and more importantly distancing the sprinters. This wasn’t to last either though as the remainder of the front group came back up to these riders and all was set for a fast finish.

Just two riders could steal the overall lead from Dumoulin by winning the bunch sprint, and with the win going to one of these in Impey that was enough to see Dumoulin toppled from the top of the podium by just one second on the last effort of the race.

As a consolation, Dumoulin did win the best young rider’s classification meaning that he was still taking a jersey home.

"If you're in for a good laugh, check my results from this year and last year – a lot of second places," Dumoulin said. "And to lose it on the last day again with one second, I cannot believe this happened again. So I'm pretty sad actually, but, yeah, whatever. Next race."

"We hoped for attacks and aggressive racing so that the others wouldn't take seconds away. But it didn't happen, and in the end it stayed together, and that was not what we wanted. But that's racing. Other teams have different ideas, and, yeah, it was impossible."

“The first part of the plan was to take the bonus seconds at the two sprints during the stage,” explained coach Aike Visbeek. “We got Simon into an 11 man group as best placed rider in GC and this put us in a good position.

“When it was back together we had two options, either go hard and aim to drop the sprinters, or go easier so that either more sprinters were left in the front group or a break stayed away. We decided to attack but Impey got back on and winning the stage gave him the GC.

“We lost the race yesterday when Impey got the bonus seconds I think. Overall it has been a good week of hard racing here though and it will set the guys up well who are riding Québec and Montréal next week.

“We won two stages, defended the overall well and were one of the teams most present in the race so we have had a good race.”

Geschke added: “The stage didn’t go as we wanted but it was tough to stop Impey from winning at the end. Maybe we went for the wrong tactics, but we gave it everything.

“I have been feeling better every day but still think that there’s a little bit of work to do before I am in shape to challenge for a good result in the two WorldTour races here next week. Hopefully with some rest this week I will be in good shape.”