Josh Callaly of Velo Performane drills it on the front of the six-man breakaway at Tour of Rhodes (Photo: Nassos Triantafyllou)
Josh Callaly is currently on his first overseas assignment with Velo Performance U23 Development and has wasted no time getting stuck in at the pointy end. He spent most of the near four-hour Tour of Rhodes (UCI 2.2) stage 2 on Saturday up the road in a dangerous looking breakaway.
It helped that Denmark's Benjamin Kofoed Thestrup (AIRTOX-Carl Ras) was with them as the 18-year-old from Greve was in the king of the mountains jersey and was clearly intent on taking more points. Callaly and those he was with got away shortly after the start and quickly stretched their advantage to a couple of minutes, and then extending it further.
Though the gap at one point went to four minutes, the tight general classification situation, not to mention the strength of the World Tour-linked U23 development teams in the bunch, meant the main field did not delay getting a purposeful chasing going.
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The 159km stage featured two climbs; the 9.1km Agios Isidoros averaging 4 per cent gradient, crested after 73km, and the 2km Eleousa averaging 5.3 per cent and crested with 30km to the finish.
With Callaly in that six-man breakaway were: Norway's Herman Emil Eriksen (Lillehammer CK Continental Team), Germany's Fausto Valentin Penna (Team Lotto Kern-Haus Outlet Montabaur), Denmark’s Thestrup (AIRTOX-Carl Ras), Italian Marco Manenti (Bardiani CSF 7 Saber) and Austra's Maximilian Schmidbauer (Schwingshandl Intralogistics).
David Gaffney got up the road, after the breakaway had been caught, on the company of yellow jersey Alexander Konychev (Photo: Nassos Triantafyllou)
Thestrup was best placed of the breakaway overall, just 10 seconds down on yellow jersey Alexander Konychev (China Anta-Mentech Cycling Team), though most of the breakaway were less than 20 seconds down.
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The bunch ensured the gap to the leaders began reducing to a manageable level in the second half of the stage, and just after the final climb the last of the breakaway men were reeled in.
Though that paved the way for a bunch sprint, a couple of attacks were fired off the front first, with Ireland's David Gaffney (Hagens Berman Jayco) one of those getting clear for a time, in the company of race leader Konychev.
The stage, into Kalithies, was won by Nikiforos Arvanitou (Team United Shipping), with the bunch trimmed right back to just 75 riders, from 135 starters.
There were four Irish riders in that bunch; Adam Rafferty (Hagens Berman Jayco) 25th, Curtis Neill (Velo Performance) 30th, Gaffney 42nd and Jack Conroy (Velo Performance).
Isaac Burman, aged just 18 years and riding for Velo Performance, was just off the back of that bunch, in 84th at 33 seconds. Callaly paid for his breakaway efforts, coming in 118th at 15:20, though having put in a great ride.
Ahead of today's final stage, which is the hilliest, Rafferty is best-placed of the Irish, sitting in 9th. He is just 12 seconds down on new yellow jersey, and prologue TT winner, Cameron Rogers (Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy).
Gaffney is 14th, at just 13 seconds, while Conroy and Curtis, who have performed very strongly at this level over the past two days, are 43rd and 46th, both at 20 seconds.
