Adam Rafferty (Hagens Berman Jayco) has put in a storming ride on the first road stage of Tour of Rhodes Powered by Rodos Palace (2.2) to move himself in the podium positions at the halfway point.
The 19-year-old, one of nine Irish riders in this race, is starting his second season as an U23 and opened his race was 7th in the TT yesterday. Today, Thursday, was among a very select group that put time into the rest of the field, which blew to pieces.
With XDS Astana Development Team and EF Education-Aevolo dishing it out on the front for much of the 148.5km stage from Rhodes to Soroni, the field was shredded, with huge gaps opening behind Rafferty's group.
The main damage was done on a small climb just before the second intermediate sprint with 110km completed; EF Education-Aevolo really making their presence felt at that point of the race for about 10km before the sprint for vital bonus seconds.
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And by the time their work was done, and the second bonus sprint contested, the front group numbered less that 25 riders; Rafferty perfectly placed by his team mates before the crucial point of the stage.
Some of the riders who had beaten Rafferty in the opening TT were dropped today, including race leader
Gleb Syritsa, a 24-year-old Russian who has ridden for the Astana Qazaqstan World Tour team for the last couple of seasons.
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That casualty rate played into Rafferty's hands, even though he was the only rider from his team in the front group. He moved up from 7th overall this morning, four seconds off Syritsa, to 3rd overall this evening.
He is now 7 seconds down on new race leader Gustav Wang (XDS Astana Development Team), the Dane who won the junior TT at the Worlds in 2021. Wang was 2nd on the stage today, behind Marcin Budziński (ATT Investments), who won in a sprint from the 24-rider front group.
Rafferty was 16th on the same time as the winner, with the eight other Irish riders in the field further back on a day of very significant time gaps due to the way the race was ridden.
Conn McDunphy (Team Skyline) was 62nd at 10:55, with his Irish team mate Cian Keogh in 110th at 7:17. Michael Collins and Willem O'Connor, among six Irish Velo Performance U23 Development Team riders in action in Greece, were 117th and 118th in the same group as Keogh.
Cal Tutty was 123rd at 19:20, Conor Prendergast 128th at 22:51, Eoghan Lattimore 134th at 22:56 while Christopher Marshall was among the non-finishers. The race continues tomorrow with 156.8km from Rhodes to Kalithies, including some 2,200m of elevation gain and a 1km climb to the finish line.
