Alice Sharpe spent a prolonged period in the breakaway at the Tour of Flanders today in Belgium only for a puncture to take her out of the move.
The Ciclotel rider, and last year's Irish road race champion, was dependent on support from neutral service at the time, which effectively ended her chances.
When the wheel change she got was slow, the gap between her and the riders she had been with grew so large she had no hope of closing back up to the leaders.
And as she had tried so hard to get into that move, and dug deep while working to establish the gap, she had effectively fired most of her bullets by the time she was re-absorbed by the peloton.
Sharpe told stickybottle her team had planned before the race to fire riders up the road early in a bid to make the breakaway. And though those first few attempts failed, her effort succeeded about 15km into the race, which she was very pleased with.
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Along with the Irish road and track international up the road were: Teuntje Beekhuis (Lotto-Soudal), Gloria Rodriguez (Movistar), Mieke Kroger (Hitec Products), Heidi Franz (Rally Cycling) and Newsom Emily (Team Tibco).
Frustratingly for Sharpe, having attacked out of the bunch with Newsom and with the group having then worked to pull out a gap of over three minutes by the time she punctured, the escape then went on to spend about 70km of the 135.6km race out front.
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In the end, and not surprisingly after her breakaway heroics, Sharpe was distanced when the pressure was ramped in what remained of the peloton after she was caught and she was a non-finisher.
Her fellow Irishwoman, Imogen Cotter, was part of the same Ciclotel selection as Sharpe today. She was making her debut at this level after having been called up to the team for the final few races of the season and was also a non-finisher.
In the race for victory, Chantal van den Broek-Blaak
(Boels Dolmans) went clear on her own on the Oude Kwaremont to take a brilliant
win after switching to TT mode for her 19km attack once the gap was
established.
She held off a classy chasing group to win by just over one minute, with her team mate Amy Pieters taking the sprint for 2nd and Lotte Kopecky (Lotto Soudal) taking 3rd place.
We'll have lots more from Sharpe tomorrow about her very strong performance at the highest level today.
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