Corkery and Rafferty put in big shift at front in France | Video

Dillon Corkery went on the attack in France while Darren Rafferty put in an epic effort on the front of the peloton (Photo: Tim van Wichelen-Cor Vos)

Dillon Corkery (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber 93) and Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost) have both put in strong rides at Tour des Alpes-Maritimes (2.1) in France today.

Corkery was aggressive, going on the attack to make the day's breakaway. Rafferty rode very impressively - not for the first time since the start of the new season - in the service of his team leader, Richard Carapaz.

Though the former Olympic road race champion was unable to finish the job in a very tough final, Rafferty's ride offered more evidence he has continued to progress during the winter. The Co Tyrone man, starting his second World Tour season, took the race by the scruff of the neck for a very lengthy period today.

And while Rafferty led the charge after the day's main breakaway, his compatriot Corkery was up the road, pushing the pace on during the 162.4km stage from Contes to Gourdon.

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He made that escape group alongside team mate Morné Van Niekerk, working to help establish a maximum advantage of just over 1:30. The breakaway group went clear on the first climb of the day, the 11km Col Saint-Roch, a cat 1.

With the cat 1 Col de Châteauneuf to come, as well as two passages of the cat 2 Gourdon, the breakaway men needed a much bigger advantage if they were to have any hope of making it all the way, which appeared unlikely.

Corkery, racing on hilly terrain not ideally suited to him, rode hard in the breakaway for 60km before losing his place in the seven-man move on the Col de Châteauneuf and was mopped up by the bunch.

At that point, Rafferty and his EF Education-EasyPost team mate, Owain Doull, were taking on the workload at the front of the ever-reducing peloton; holding the breakaway's gap at 1:30 and then reeling in the move.

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And with about 35km to go, the breakaway was caught, with Rafferty having worked tirelessly on the front for kilometre after kilometre before his work was done with the breakaway pegged back to 35 seconds.

As the final began, up the last climb to the finish, Carapaz was unable to capitalise on the work of his team as he was dropped by a trio that went on to fight for victory. The three strongest were the Bahrain Victorious duo of Santiago Buitrago and Lenny Martinez and yesterday's Classic Var winner Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana Team).

Though Buitrago and Martinez made much of the running in splitting the group and then pushing forward in the final three, Scaroni was also willing to work and then beat them in the sprint to the line.

Buitrago was a very close 2nd, with Martinez 3rd at 10 seconds. Carapaz was back in 10th at 1:09, a poor return for the team's efforts. After his breakaway efforts, Corkery finished in 77th at 16:10 while Rafferty was 79th at 18:57.

The race concludes tomorrow, Sunday, with another hilly one; some 132km from Villefranche-sur-Mer to Vence with 2,400m of climbing.

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