Liam O’Brien, above, and Adam Rafferty have gotten Ireland’s efforts off to a fantastic start at Tour de l’Avenir

Adam Rafferty and Liam O’Brien may have impressed for Ireland up to World Championship level, but doing it under pressure at the Tour de l’Avenir is another challenge. However, both finished in the top 10 today in the opening uphill TT in the French Alps.

Perhaps most encouraging is the performance of O’Brien, who, along with Jamie Meehan, will be Ireland’s general classification rider, and the fact Ireland are already 2nd in the team classification.

The big man from Cork has already gained time of some highly fancied men in the field. More important, however, is his demonstrating very strong form from the gun in this race, and that’s very good news indeed for Team Ireland.

Rafferty has proven himself world class against the watch as a junior and U23 – two top 10s in the Worlds and Europeans as a junior and a top 10 as a first-year U23 last year – and he was Ireland’s best rider today. He placed 7th, some 12 seconds down on stage winner, and red hot general classification favourite, Paul Seixas, the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale World Tour rider competing for France this week.

Seixas – 8th overall at Critérium du Dauphiné (2.UWT) this year aged 18 years – completed the 3km climb to Tignes 1800 in a time of 7:19 today. He was just a fraction of a second faster than another first year U23 rider, last year’s junior road race world champion Lorenzo Finn (Italy). Austrian 21-year-old, Marco Schrettl, was 3rd at seven seconds.

Rafferty was 7th at 12 seconds and O’Brien was 8th at 13 seconds. The rest of the Irish were further down the field, with today’s stage perhaps more significant in offering a glimpse at riders’ form rather than the time gaps that opened.

However, Ireland’s newest World Tour rider, Jamie Meehan, will be a little disappointed at the time he lost as he was back in 43rd at 43 seconds. For Meehan, his terrain will come later in the race when the riders hit the long hard mountains.

Ronan O’Connor was 103rd today, at 1:23, with Dean Harvey 140th at 1:59 and top sprinter Seth Dunwoody back in 145th, at 2:08, though the next few days may throw up some big chances for the Giro Next Gen stage winner.

And the same goes for Rafferty; the Co Tyrone man, and Irish U23 TT champion, has clearly hit the ground running on this race and that bodes very well for his hopes of maybe going up the road and taking a stage, as he did a day after Dunwoody at Giro Next Gen back in May.

Overall, nowithstanding perhaps a bit more time lost by Meehan that one would have hoped, it’s been a very encouraging day for the Irish on the opening day of racing in the biggest U23 race in the world.