Philip Lavery - leading - on his way to the silver medal at the recent Elite National Road Race Championships in Carlingford, Co Louth. He will ride in the colours of Cofidis for the rest of the year (Photo: Toby Watson)
Philip Lavery has secured a stagiaire deal to ride for the rest of the current season with the French professional team Cofidis, which currently has a squad in the Tour de France.
Lavery will begin his trial from August 1st and will ride a packed schedule for the remainder of the season with the Pro Continental team.
Should all go well, he would then secure a place with the team for next year and would join Martyn Irvine, Philip Deignan, Stephen Clancy and Matt Brammeier in the ranks of the Pro Continental teams registered with the UCI.
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Deignan and Irvine are with Unitedhealtcare based in the US, Clancy is with Novo Nordisk also in the US and Brammeier is with the Asian-based Champion System team. Nicolas Roche and Dan Martin are riding in the top tier with Saxo-Tinkoff and Garmin-Sharp respectively.
Dubliner Lavery just yesterday, Sunday, continued his excellent run of form to date this season with another French victory.
He was first to the line in the Prix de la Chapelle-lès-Luxeuil, a 121km race in the Haute-Saône department of eastern France. Yesterday’s win is the latest in a series of triumphs for Lavery since he relocated to France this year to ride for AC Bisontine.
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On May 20th he took victory in the Prix des Vallons in Schweighouse-sur-Moder. The race was the third of six rounds of the DN2 Coupe de France after opening his 2013 account with a win in the Tour du Charolais.
That latter victory came in the earlier part of the season, but victory in the Souvenir Jean Lacroix came in the first week in May. And he followed that up just four days later when he won the opening stage of the Tour de Franche Comté in eastern France. He was quickest in the sprint to the line from a breakaway group of seven men.
That win brought him the yellow jersey and was his best victory since moving to France earlier this year. The four-day, five-stage, event is a major fixture that attracts many of the top teams in the country.
He was to lose the jersey and abandon the race, but followed up the next day with his DN2 Coupe de France.
And he also took a number of top 10 placings in the Tour de Beauce (UCI 2.2) in Canada in the week before his silver at the Nationals behind Brammeier.
Stickybottle speculated in a piece just yesterday that he had done enough to secure a stagiaire for the remainder of the season and that development has been confirmed today; very best of luck to him and fingers crossed we will be writing about his exploits in the paid ranks next year.
