Jamie Meehan has emerged from Tour de l'Ain (2.1) knowing what it feels like to sit at the back of the Visma Lease a Bike train as it drives it on the front on major climbs trying to ride everyone into the ground. And though the young Irishman, now on a trial period with Cofidis, saw his GC hopes fall away on the brutal final stage, he told stickybottle he was happy with his performance.
The Dutch World Tour team, riding for eventual stage and overall winner Cian Uijtdebroeks, blew the field to pieces on the Col de la Biche - 6km at over nine per cent gradient. And that was before the not so small matter of the Col du Grand Colombier, a 15.3km at eight per cent.
Meehan was 3rd on the stage the previous day, with a career-best performance, coming in the first race of his stagiaire with the French World Tour team. As result, be began the stage equal on time with a group of six, all equal on time just over 50 seconds down on race leader and 2nd placed Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Uijtdebroeks.
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"Visma rode the Col de la Biche climb full gas. I went super deep to hang in there to the last 10 guys. But I kind of just blew my lights," Meehan told stickybottle, explaining he developed some illness during the race in France.
"We were chasing hard to try and stay within touching distance (of the lead group of seven) but on the Grand Colombier I just had nothing, and I kind of went backwards, I was just empty.
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"But I still managed to get 16th on the stage (yesterday) and 14th overall. It's a bit different from where I was the day before," he said of being 3rd on the stage.
"But, at the same time, if you told me before the race that I was even going to be near the top 15 I would have been pretty happy. So, for sure, it was still a good week."
That "good week" underlined that Meehan, though completely new to this level of racing, already has the abilities to cope with it and to take results; a major juncture in his career. And that was despite being hampered by illness.
"I picked up a bit of illness," he said. "I was sharing a room with Simon Carr, he had a bit of a sore throat and stuff. And on Thursday evening I started to have the same things.
"So I think I picked up a bit of that. I had a pretty bad sleep too. And with the really hard stage the day before I think these things just really came together."
