Jumbo Visma has heaped lavish praise on its young Irish rider, Archie Ryan, saying it was lucky he was able to step into a team leadership role so confidently at Tour de Luxembourg yesterday when its intended protected rider, Tiesj Benoot, faltered in the very tough final of stage 3.
While Ben Healy, the Irish road race champion riding with EF Education-EasyPost, was up the road solo powering towards stage victory and the yellow jersey, Ryan was just behind doing serious damage in a very select chasing group.
That group swelled briefly, when riders caught it from behind, on the penultimate lap of the hilly finishing circuit in Vianden - with a climb negotiated three times. However, in the early stages of that penultimate lap, and then on the final passage of the circuit, Ryan was among the eight or nine strongest riders dropping the others.
Advertisement
He was instigating attacks, putting Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) and Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates), not to mention the others in the group, under real pressure. Ryan eventually went on to finish 6th on the stage, in a four-man group chasing Healy and two riders just behind him - Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates) and Dylan Teuns (Israel Premierm Tech).
Related News
"We wanted to go for the win”, Jumbo Visma sports director Wynants said. "Tiesj was our man to do it, but he didn't feel as good as we'd hoped. We were also up against an incredibly strong Healy. Luckily, Archie rode a good race. He managed to get away with the best climbers on the steepest parts. That's an excellent performance from such a young rider.”
Wynants added he hoped the small group Ryan pulled away in on the final lap could close down Hirschi and Teuns, and then also catch Healy, and take victory. However, he added while Healy was too strong, Ryan had ridden out of his socks.
"Archie's chances of closing the gap were very slim. The climb was followed by a valley where the breakaway rider was basically at a disadvantage. So, it seemed important to use our strengths across the board. But today, it was a different scenario. Sam Oomen and Koen Bouwman returned strongly to help, but sixth place was the maximum we could achieve.”
Ryan, who is riding the event with the World Tour Jumbo Visma team, is leaving the Dutch outfit's development team at year end in favour of a move to World Tour squad EF Education-EasyPost. And despite having raced just 12 days this year - as injury prevented him competing until early last month - he was bossing the action yesterday in the final of a very hard 168.4km race in the rain.
