Glory or bust Roger Aiken just falls short after putting it all on the line into Charleville

The attacking Roger Aiken overhauled, Jan Sokol of the Synergy Baku team celebrates winning stage 3 of the 2014 An Post Rás from Lisdoonvarna to Charleville (Photo: Ramsey Cardy - Sportsfile)

A year after a magnificent week-long performance saw him emerge as the county man of the race and one of the very strongest in the field, Roger Aiken just missed out on stage victory on the An Post Rás into Charleville this afternoon.

The Louth North man infiltrated the day’s successful breakaway and after taking the two climbers’ primes and the sole hot spot sprint on offer, he very nearly pulled off the big one at the end of 154km between Lisdoonvarna and Charleville.

Aiken jumped his breakaway companions twice in the last couple of kilometres and while he pulled clear each time he was hunted down by his strong fellow escapees and was left to wonder what might have been.

The stage win went to Jan Sokol of the Azerbaijani-registered team Synergy Baku. He was quickest of the nine-man escape that dominated the day's proceedings. They were just seconds ahead of the main field after at one point having just shy of four minutes on the pack.

Some strong riding by the New Zealand national team of race leader and yesterday’s stage winner Patrick Bevin closed the gap enough to ensure there was no shake up in the standings despite the breakaway having pulled the gap out to 3:55 just before the halfway point.

Sokol has made a very good start to this race and has gotten himself into many of the dangerous look moves. He was rewarded today with a great victory.

His team boasts a strong Irish interest, with former Rás winner David McCann its directeur sportif this week, David McQuaid the squad’s general manager and last year’s Rás runner up overall Connor McConvey their main hope for the overall.

In their first season last year they came to the Rás and took two stages, with today’s victory a welcome boost after McConvey lost nearly 11 minutes yesterday.

As well as Aiken in the nine-man winning move today, also present was another very strong county rider in the shape of Damien Shaw of Aquablue.

His presence there was another excellent showing for his squad, with the Cork-based team having taken the county rider prize with Sean Lacey on yesterday’s stage 2. At one point it had four of its five riders in the leading large breakaway group on that second stage.

Shaw was 4th today and so took the county rider prize for his efforts.

After the chaos of yesterday, with breakaways moving up the road all day to create a large regrouping at the head of the race in the final hour before it all blew apart in the closing 20km, today’s stage was much more straight forward.

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In the first few minutes of racing a small group went clear. It contained Davide Ballerini (Italy Team Idea 2010 ASD), Bryan McCrystal (Cork City Aquablue), John Mason (Dublin North Team 39 Spin 11), Adam Armstrong (Meath Dunboyne DID),Eoin McCarthy (Tipperary North Visit Nenagh.Ie), Darcy Ellerm-Norton (Australia Team Subaru-Albion) and Ronan McLaughlin (Donegal Inishowen Gateway McCafe).

However, they were to gain just 15 to 20 seconds before being caught and then almost instantly the winning escape went away and spent the entire stage up the road.

The escape featured Jan Sokol (Azerbaijan Synergy Baku),Pierrick Naud (Canada), Oliver Wood (Great Britain national team), David Wohrer (Austria Tirol Cycling), Andre Benoit (Germany Team Kuota), Riccardo Pichetta (Italy Team IDEA 2010 ASD), Roger Aiken (Louth North), Robert Jon McCarthy (An Post Chainreaction Sean Kelly) and Damien Shaw (Cork City Aquablue).

The gap was permitted to grow for the first half of the stage before the Kiwi-led chase in the second half gradually reeled them in.

Aiken won both cat 3 climbs of the day, at Cloghoolia after 63.6km and Knockbrack just 9km later. And he also took the hot spot prime at Hospital.

As the gap between peloton and breakaway came down all the way to the line it was touch and go as to whether the escapees would make it after such a long effort out front, but survive they did.

Aiken attacked and was brought back around the 2km remaining marker and he tried once again just inside 1km to go. Again he got a gap but was brought back.

And while stage 1 winner McCarthy might have been fancied to take another victory, it was Sokol who was quickest in the dash to the line as the breakaway split under the aggression of the finale, taking the stage from Pichetta and Wood.

Aiken’s glory or bust effort saw him lose 12 seconds in the push to the line, though he held off the fast finishing group behind to take 8th place on the day.

More later.