Simon Gerrans laid down a marker for the 2014 World Championships with a brilliant win at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebéc. He came back from a late mechanical and timed his sprint to perfection on the tough uphill finish.

Simon Gerrans laid down a marker for the 2014 World Championships with a brilliant win at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebéc. He came back from a late mechanical and timed his sprint to perfection on the tough uphill finish.
In a repeat of last year, Marcel Kittel took victory in Paris, bookending this year’s Tour in the same way he did in the previous edition. He flicked on the afterburners to storm past Alexander Kristoff in the final few metres of a furious bunch sprint to take a narrow victory. Vincenzo Nibali, the Shark of Messina, sailed over the line safely to seal his comprehensive overall victory.
This was supposed to be a routine flat stage, a pause for breath between Pyrenean pain and the long time trial tomorrow. Instead we had rain making the peloton’s life miserable, a perfectly executed, pre-planned attack by Ramunas Navardauskas to break Garmin-Sharp’s Tour duck and Peter Sagan hitting the deck as another stage slipped from his grasp.