Darragh O’Mahony, the Irish U23 road race champion,
endured a trying start to his Tour de l’Avenir campaign today when he punctured
and lost a lot of time.
Riding the 10-stage race in France for the UCI’s World
Cycling Centre, O’Mahony found himself at the wrong end of some pretty extreme
rule enforcement.
The Irish rider punctured with about 45km to go and while
he would have highly fancied his chances to get back into the bunch, that wasn’t
to be.
A commissaire insisted on taking the cars out so O’Mahony
could not avail of the usual benefit of the cavalcade to regain contact.
The result of the unusual enforcement measure was that he never saw the main field again, finishing more than 15 behinds it.
Advertisement
Despite his troubles he told stickybottle he was hoping
to get up the road in the first week of the race.
“The plan for me is just to be as
aggressive as possible on the first week as the last part of the race in the
Alps won’t suit me very well,” he said.
“So I’ll hope to get up the road and
take my chances in the breakaways and see if I can’t get a result on one or two
stages to repay the UCI Centre for bringing me.”
Related News
Today’s stage was won by Mathias Norsgaard Jørgensen
(Denmark), who finished alone almost one minute clear of the peloton.
The bunch was led home by British duo Tom Pidcock and Ethan Hayter, signaling their intent with an early show of strength.
The stage winner got clear
from the gun with Slovenian Ziga Horvat, gaining five minutes before the Dane
left his companion and rode in alone.
Darragh O’Mahony was 151st some 16:13 down on the winner.
He is in the UCI team for the race with compatriot Ben Healy.
Today Healy finished in the main failed, some 52 seconds down, and placed 83rd on the 128.8km stage starting and finishing in Marmande.
Topics
