MONTREAL - Lars Petter Nordhaug of Norway led in a frantic final sprint to win the Grand Prix Cycliste of Montreal, while Canada's Ryder Hesjedal finished in the lead group of the UCI World Tour race.
Moreno Moser of Italy was second and Alexander Kolobnev was third in an action-packed final lap.
Hesjedal, the Garmin-Sharp team leader from Victoria, twice chased down escape attempts in the last kilometres and look set to take part in the final sprint, but finished near the back of the lead group.
Nordhaug got the win for the Sky procycling team while the Italian Moser got third for the Liquigas squad.
Hesjedal was top Canadian at 23rd, David Veilleux of Cap Rouge, Que., was 24th and Francois Parisien of Montreal was 25th.
It was the final race on Canadian soil for 36-year-old Michael Barry of Toronto, who plans to retire at the end of the season after a long career of top-level racing.
It was ideal 19 C racing weather, although quite windy at the top of the course for the 205.7-kilometre race, which saw the 21 teams do 17 laps of a steep course that ran up and down Mount Royal in the centre of the city.
The entertainment for crowds lining the course came from Eduard Vorganov, Manuele Boaro and Egoi Martinez, who broke away at the start of the second lap and built a more than seven minute lead.
Boaro was dropped along the way, but Vorganov and Martinez put up a valiant fight before they were swallowed by the pack on the next to last lap, with the Canadian SpiderTech team doing much of the work at the front of the peloton.
The field included six of the world's top 20 riders.
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