Matthew Teggart and Dillon Corkery have ridden very strongly at Paris - Troyes (1.2) after both Irish riders made the front group on a day when the race split to pieces.
Teggart (WiV SunGod) placed 4th and Corkery (CC Étupes) was 5th; both contesting the sprint for victory after 180km of racing from Colombey-les-Deux-Églises to Troyes in north eastern France.
The race began with intense attacking and the main field lined out at 65km per hour almost from the gun, with riders dropped less than 10km into the contest. Teggart's team were to the fore in that early action and when the first bout of attacking saw a 13-man group ride clear, WiV SunGod had four riders in the move.
Teggart was there along with Benjamin Perry, Robert Scott and Reece Wood. With 40km covered they had a gap of about 25 seconds over the peloton led by Groupama FDJ Development. While the breakaway worked to establish a bigger advantage, the attacks continued to fly off the front of the bunch before two chasing groups - one with eight riders and the other with 10 - got clear.
Advertisement
Corkery was in the second, larger, chasing group and with 80km covered the two front groups had merged, creating a 20-rider breakaway. At that point, Corkery's group was still one minute back, with the peloton almost three minutes behind the breakaway.
However, with 80km covered Corkery's group had closed right up to the breakaway and eventually caught it, creating a 29-rider leading group some four minutes up on the main bunch. When a small chasing group got clear from the bunch and closed to within 30 seconds of the leaders, Teggart attacked up front in a four-man group.
Related News
While that move was caught, it added new impetus to the leaders and also saw their number trimmed by a couple of riders, as the gap back to the chasing group shot out to well over a minute. With 40km to go Corkery jumped off the front of the lead group and was joined by three others.
However, they too were closed down and there was no change at the front until 15km to go when Teggart's team mate Perry attacked solo. He got a gap of about 25 seconds and despite some counter attacks behind him he managed to hold off the front group until 700m to go when he was finally caught.
That paved the way for a group sprint, with the race won by WiV SunGod's Jacob Scott from Xavier Cañellas (Java Kiwi Atlántico), Kévin Avoine (CC Nogent-sur-Oise), Teggart and Corkery, with the front group trimmed back to 22 riders by the finish. Irish team EvoPro Racing were also in the field but were among the non-finishers after a heavy racing schedule of late.
