Getting to grips with yellow; New Zealand's Patrick Bevin was due to start his second day in the lead of the An Post Rás on stage 4 into Cahirciveen today, Wednesday, and sounds pretty relaxed about the task ahead (Photo: Ramsey Cardy - Sportsfile)
By Shane Stokes
With his team forced to chase from the drop of the flag to contain breakaways, in particular a long distance move which saw nine riders stay clear to the line, Patrick Bevin had a nervous first day defending the yellow jersey he took on Monday afternoon in the An Post Rás.
A dangerous nine man move went clear in the first fifteen minutes of stage three and built a lead of four minutes.
The best-placed of those, Pierrick Naud (Canada), had started the day just four minutes and ten seconds back overall, and so he went close to becoming the race leader on the road.
Advertisement
Bevin’s New Zealand team dragged the bunch along for many kilometres and while they received assistance from the Australia Subaru Albion towards the end of the 154.6 kilometre stage, they expended large amounts of energy.
Bevin accepted that his team-mates worked hard, but said they had little choice.
“What else can we do?” he said.
“We respect the jersey, and for us, [considering] the energy [spent] keeping the jersey, it was the best way to go about it.
“The guys just rode tempo all day. In some ways that is the easiest thing to do.”
The stage winner Jan Sokol (Azerbaijan Synergy Baku) and the next four riders in the move all finished sixteen seconds ahead of the main bunch.
Bevin said that getting those riders back was never the priority.
“To be honest, we weren’t very worried about bringing the break right back,” he said.
“We were happy to give up a minute. There was nobody within four minutes of the jersey. It is not our job, we were not going to waste energy to bring it back and then not win the stage.
Related News
“It [the break] didn’t come back. I think if we needed it back, the guys could have done it. But that is bike racing.”
In a video interview conducted after stage two, Bevin told stickybottle that he likes racing on short, steep climbs.
He will have plenty of those today, Wednesday; with the riders tackling no less than ten categorised ascents en route to Caherciveen.
He knows that he is certain to come under attack during the 183.6 kilometre stage and will hope that his team can limit the gains of riders who slip clear.
Providing they can do so, Bevin will then aim to match his main challengers on the day’s climbs, including the category one wall of Coomanaspic.
It tops out twenty kilometres from the finish and it, plus the earlier climbs, will likely see the bunch scattered over several minutes.
But Bevin insisted he is not going to get tied up with what might happen.
“We are just going to take it day by day,” he said.
“It is going to be a really, really tough jersey to defend but we are just going to take it step by step and keep going at it.”
He has a one minute 55 second advantage over Clemens Fankhauser (Austria Tirol Cycling Team) and Alessandro Pettiti (Italy Team Idea 2010 ASD). Markus Eibegger (Azerbaijan Synergy Baku Cycling) and David Chopin (France Bretagne Velotec) are a further two seconds in arrears.
The other riders in the race are at least two minutes back.
Topics
