The race is one of the only two events which are part of the World Tour calendar in North America, the other one being the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal contested two days later.

The major difficulties were: It is worth noting that the Côte Gilmour descent included a technical passage, 2 successive left bends of 90 degrees each, the first of which was negotiated while the descending slope had a gradient of more than 10%.

The 22 teams that competed in the race were:[8] The start was given by the mayor of Quebec City, Régis Labeaume, and the former French Prime Minister Alain Juppé.

[1] On lap 4, another escape group formed, initiated by Thomas Rohregger (RadioShack–Nissan), who was chased by Vladimir Gusev (Team Katusha), both men had been part of an earlier breakaway.

[2] Soon thereafter, Saxo Bank–Tinkoff Bank's Chris Anker Sørensen and Canadian national team member Bruno Langlois tried their luck and built a small 20 seconds gap by the start of the penultimate lap.

Liquigas–Cannondale's Peter Sagan made a move in a bid to catch the two men, but fell short after approaching to 30 metres (98 ft) of the duet and was swallowed by the charging bunch in the final kilometre.