The Rapha Condor JLT team of Aaron Buggle on their way to 3rd in the TTT at the Tour of Korea
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By Brian Canty
Ireland’s Stephen Clancy (Team Novo Nordisk) and Aaron Buggle (Rapha Condor JLT) are both past the halfway point of the 2.2 Tour of Korea, with both down on GC but riding well against higher ranked opposition.
Buggle’s opportunities have been restricted all week because he is essentially riding for teammate Michael Cuming who is well placed on GC, just over three minutes off the race lead in fifth place.
Irish cycling fans will be familiar with Cuming as he waged a fabulous battle with Martin Hunal and Tomas Okrouhlicky for the King of the Mountains jersey at last month’s An Post Rás, finishing fourth behind those two as well as his own teammate Richard Handley.
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This week Buggle has been 95th, 94th, 82nd, 82nd while on yesterday’s team time trial his team put in a superb ride to notch third place on the stage, just three seconds behind stage winners and Pro Continental outfit MTN Quebeka who have some top class riders in their ranks.
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Second on the stage was Matt Brammeier’s team, Champion Systems – though Brammeier isn’t riding, so to beat the Australian team as well as many of the home teams will have come as a huge boost to John Herety and his band of young riders.
The UK-based squad covered the 25.5 kilometre course in a time of 35 minutes 22 seconds and showed they might be ready for an assault on yellow yet.
Buggle currently lies 91st overall, 47 minutes and 47 seconds down on the race leader but that won’t concern him in the least as he’ll be on domestique duty for as long as Cuming is in contention. The Meath man is also looking to build form after his horror crash at the Rás in advance of next week’s National road race Championships in Dundalk.
Clancy, meanwhile, is almost mirroring the performances of his Irish compatriot and so far has been 80th, 70th, 80th, 99th, while on the team time trial his Novo Nordisk team were almost three minutes slower than the pace set by the winners but to give credit to Clancy, three of his team-mates were outside the time limit on stage one and that lack of firepower hampered their chances. He is just behind Buggle in 92nd at 49 minutes and 21 seconds.
The Limerick man doesn’t have anyone troubling the GC so he’ll try and get in the breaks in the coming days, perhaps starting today on stage six where one of just two category one climbs overall are featured.
Tomorrow’s penultimate stage is a 145 kilometre run from Yangyang to Honcheon before Sunday’s finale, a largely flat 90 kilometre journey to the finish in Hanam.
In total, there are three Pro Continental teams, 11 Continental teams and six National/Club teams and the current race leader is coming from one of the latter teams – King Lok Cheung of the Hong Kong National team.
Interestingly, Irishman David McCann won the race back in 2005 while he rode on the Asian circuit for the Giant Asia team.
The race winner will get for himself a cool €7,500 while stage winners will each get €2,600.
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