Crowd favourite Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp) made an attack and had a slight gap when he crossed the finish line on stage 1 in the Tour of Alberta. Unaware of the fact that one lap still remained, he raised his arms in celebration before quickly realizing his mistake and falling back to the 5-Hour-led peloton.

“We were told and it was in our head that there were three laps [of the finishing circuit], and it was a pretty intense circuit, and I didn’t even look at the lap counter or anything,” said Hesjedal according to Velonews.com. “I was just in the zone … the Ks seemed right in the speedo [computer]. Sometimes you can tell a little bit, and even in the last time going into it, it felt like we were racing for the finish. Then after a little bit I felt like it was a little too good to be true. I was kind of half committed to saluting, because I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. Yeah. I can’t say I’ve done that before, so there’s a first time for everything.”

Eventually Hesjedal finished anonymously in the bunch and remained 9th overall, trailing race leader Peter Sagan (Cannondale) by 40 seconds.