Megan Armitage has taken a career best result with 4th on a stage at Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche (2.1). The Irish rider, competing this year with Continental team IBCT, made the breakaway on stage 3 of the race in France, which was won by her team mate Loes Adegeest.
When the four-rider breakaway gained 30 seconds on a chasing group and 2½ minutes on next large group, the stage result saw Armitage move up the general classification to 4th overall after 103.6km of racing from Avignon to Pernes-les-Fontaines.
On today's stage 4 - some 105.2km from Beauchastel to Sarras - a breakaway group won and the day and some of them gained more than five minutes on the bunch, which Armitage and Irish champion, and team mate, Alice Sharpe were in.
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The time loss saw Armitage drop down the general classification a little, though she is still 10th, some 5:12 behind today's stage winner and new race leader Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon Sram Generation).
While Armitage has won in Europe and been on the podium several times, those results have come in kermesse racing which do not have UCI grading. However, the stage race in France she is now riding is UCI ranked and is also on hiller terrain, with World Tour teams in the field.
Armitage has tended to go better on harder terrain and she certainly lived up to that billing yesterday when she made the winning breakaway, before helping her team mate to win the stage.
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On the first climb of the day three riders went clear and Armitage bridged across to them. When she learned her team mate Adegeest was trying to make her way across to the move, Armitage waited and the two team mates caught the trio up front, making for a five-rider leading group.
The pace of the breakaway soon saw it trimmed back to four, with Armitage and Adegeest present with Ricarda Bauernfeind (Canyon Sram Generation) and Emma Langley of EF Education-TIBCO-SVB, representing the USA, for company.
While the Movistar team organised the chase in the finale back in the remains of the peloton, the breakaway managed to hold off the main field. At the finish, Armitage led-out Adegeest, with the Dutch woman taking the victory and the race lead.
On today’s stage a large breakaway group got clear, with Niedermaier riding away from it and taking a solo win by 1:11 on the chasing group; Sheyla Gutiérrez (Movistar) winning the sprint for 2nd place. The main bunch, containing Armitage and Sharpe, was sprinting for 12th place some 5:30 behind the winner. Sharpe took 21st on the stage and Armitage 32nd, both in the bunch.
While their team mate Adegeest lost the race lead, she was in the breakaway today and placed 7th on the stage, finishing in the group 1:11 down on the winner. It means she only dropped one place to 2nd overall, at 37 seconds. with three stages remaining.
