The Irish U23 team has made a very solid start to the Tour de l'Avenir this evening when they limited their losses to the teams finishing ahead of them in the prologue TT and gained time on other fancied squads.
Ireland go into this race with a line-up that has individual riders who can win stages and feature in the final general classification and which, combined, makes for one of the most impressive U23 national teams every assembled.
The team is comprised of Dean Harvey, Kevin McCambridge, Adam Ward, Darren Rafferty, Liam Curley and Archie Ryan.
They finished in 12th place, of 27 teams, in the opening 3.9km team race against the clock in La Roche-sur-Yon in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region in western France.
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The TTT was won by the Dutch squad, with an average speed just above 66.4km per hour. They beat the Norway and Great Britain into 2nd and 3rd places, with both of those teams four seconds down. On an evening when some teams lost almost one minute, the Irish shipped just 14 seconds to the winners.
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While Ryan is the best general classification prospect, given his climbing abilities, Rafferty has a great chance of a stage win having already won Strade Bianche di Romagna (1.2U) this season.
McCambridge and Ward both took stage wins in Rás Tailteann and are now the kind of experienced campaigners who could really impress over the next 10 days in France - McCambridge in particular due a big performance. Curley has ridden some very hard races with EvoPro Racing and the national team this year and ridden well when the going has been toughest. He may be the surprise package of the team.
And while Harvey is a first-year U23, he has already shown he can cope with a higher level of racing as he performed strongly at the recent Tour Alsace (2.2), his first big race since relocating to France for the latter part of the season.
Tomorrow's opening road stage of the race is 121.6km, again starting and finishing in La Roche-sur-Yon. While the flat terrain lends itself to a bunch sprint, the racing will be aggressive and a breakaway could gain minutes on any stages in this event.
La Roche-sur-Yon TTT 3.9km
01 NETHERLANDS 03:51
02 NORWAY + 04
03 GREAT BRITAIN + 04
04 PAYS DE LA LOIRE + 06
05 CZECH REPUBLIC + 10
06 ITALY + 10
07 GERMANY + 10
08 FRANCE + 11
09 LUXEMBOURG + 12
10 AUSTRALIA + 12
11 AUVERGNE RHONE-ALPES + 13
12 IRELAND + 14
13 DENMARK + 14
14 KAZAKHSTAN + 14
15 USA + 14
16 SWITZERLAND + 14
17 CANADA + 15
18 SLOVENIA + 19
19 COLOMBIA + 20
20 SLOVAKIA + 21
21 AUSTRIA + 21
22 CENTRE MONDIAL DU CYCLISME + 23
23 MEXICO + 24
24 BELGIUM + 29
25 SPAIN + 31
26 ERITREA + 53
27 ECUADOR + 53
