Team Ireland has started Tour de l'Avenir on a very positive note today, going in the breakaway and also keeping general classification hope, Archie Ryan, safe in the bunch.
However, while Dean Harvey flew the flag for Ireland up the road - after a long chase to get across to the first three aggressors - perhaps the biggest news from an Irish perspective was a crash close to the start that has taken one of the big favourites, and one of Ryan's main rivals, out of the race.
A major pile-up occurred shortly after the start of today's stage - some 140km from Carnac to La Gacilly - resulting in several riders being badly injured. And while they righted themselves and go going again, some of them did not make it to the finish, such were their injuries.
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One of the injured riders forced out was Norway's Johannes Staune-Mittet, who is a team mate of Ryan's at Jumbo Visma Development. Staune-Mittet, who is signed to the Jumbo Visma World Tour team for the next three years, won the Next Gen Giro earlier this year and was also 2nd overall Tour de l'Avenir last year.
He went into this race as one of big favourites for overall victory and his abandon today is a blow for Norway, which opens up the general classification battle a little more.
Today, after some early lone attacks were canceled out, three riders went clear about 15km into the stage - Giacomo Villa (Italy), Anders Foldager (Denmark) and Loïc Bettendorff (Luxembourg). Once they had established a gap of about 30 seconds, Harvey set off after them with Michał Pomorski (Poland) for company, with Pierre Thierry (France) later getting across to them.
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However, the chase by Harvey, Pomorski and Thierry became protracted and it took them over 35km to catch the riders ahead, making for a six-man breakaway group with about 95km left to race. While their advantage reached about four minutes, it only remained that large for a short period, as the peloton closed in by about one minute almost immediately.
Harvey was unfortunately distanced from the breakaway group with about 30km remaining, leaving the five remaining riders out front. And while they were chased hard all the way to the finish, and their gap tumbled, they still had six seconds at the finish.
Denmark's Foldager - who will be a team mate of Eddie Dunbar's at Jayco AlUla next year - claimed the victory, and the first stage yellow jersey of the race. Italy's Villa was 2nd with France's Thierry 3rd, then Poland's Pomorski and Luxembourg's Bettendorff.
Ireland's Ryan, Jamie Meehan and Odhran Doogan all finished in the bunch - 46th, 69th and 101st respectively. Kevin McCambridge was 136th at 3:50 while Patrick O'Loughlin was 152nd at 8:31 and Harvey 158th at 12:29.
Tomorrow's stage takes the riders on a mostly flat 189km from Nozay to Chinon before Wednesday's 21km TTT.
