David McCann has traded his bike for the An Post Rás team car with Synergy Baku and said while they should have been in the breakaway today they did well to bring it back together. Seen here in the final stage of Rás 2004 in yellow, led by national squad team mate Tommie Evans.
While the An Post Chainreaction team benefitted most from today’s opening Rás stage, the Azerbaijan-registered Synergy Baku squad of last year’s runner up Connor McConvey had a lot to do with the way the stage ended. And they showed they will be a force to reckon with later on in this race.
With a 10-man group almost three minutes up at one point, it was McConvey's men who took the bull by the horns and set about reeling in the move.
Advertisement
Although their sprinter Daniel Klemme didn’t quite finish it off at the stage end in Roscommon, third place was a lot better then it could have been earlier in the day.
“It was a fast race,” said the German sprinter afterwards.
“We missed the break and had to do a lot of work today so the guys couldn’t help me in the finish. But I only managed to get around the corner in third position and finished third in the sprint.
Related News
"Stage wins are one of our goals but we always try to win the GC. That’s the main goal I think and it was important not to lose time today and we didn’t.”
As they were driving at the front of the peloton, the Baku squad managed to avoid a big crash with 30km to go and eventually brought the leaders back in the final kilometres.
“We slipped up badly by not placing a man in that escape group,” said directeur sportif, treble Irish Olympian and former Rás winner David McCann.
“We had some help from the Tirol team to bring them back and Daniel finished off the job really well with third so the guys are clearly in good form.”
Topics
