After Friday’s podium finish in the Québec portion of the Canadian races week-end, Team Katusha was hopeful for more results in the second race, Sunday’s 17-lap circuit race in downtown Montréal. But Sunday dawned with heavy rain that didn’t let up for much of the race and saw only 64 riders come to the finish line. Sprinting in for the win was Lotto-Soudal’s Tim Wellens with a winning time of 5:20.09. On the same time was Adam Yates of Orica-GreenEdge with Lampre-Merida’s Rui Costa coming in at 2-seconds. Alexander Kristoff was the best of the Katusha’s riders in 29th at just over one minute.

"We were trying to make a result with Sergey Lagutin but he was dropped on the last climb and couldn’t come back, so we didn’t get that result today. We used Zakarin early to close down the first part of the race and he had to use up a lot of his energy for that, but we learned that he has very good condition and we’re happy about that. We weren’t able to tell much about the others, as the weather was just too bad today. In general we knew this race was a little too much for Kristoff, so we looked to Lagutin, but in the end Alex finished ahead of him. This of course means I’m happy with the condition of Alexander too. He showed us a podium position on Friday so we are not surprised that even in today’s weather he was still good," assessed team director Dmitry Knoyshev.

Breaks continued to go clear during the laps and many efforts saw Team Katusha’s Ilnur Zakarin in the break himself or closing one down. At 205,7 km, the circuit included three climbs each lap, and most challenging was the 1,8 km Côte Camillien-House at 8% average gradient. It was this climb in the soggy conditions that was the undoing of more than half the riders. It was only in the last few laps that a break looked possible to stay clear, but a re-grouping for the final lap saw Wellens able to slip off the front with Yates for the two-up sprint.

"Overall we were happy that the Russians who came here got in some good training for the TTT which most of them will ride in the Worlds next week. Coming to North America to race these races was very good preparation," concluded Dmitry Konyshev.