Jake Gray has ridden his first elite race; a UCI-ranked road race in Africa with his new French team VC Toucy.
Having been a really dominant junior on the home scene last year and represented Ireland many times, Jake Gray has already been in action in his first elite UCI race and shown some real grit.
The teenager, who is riding with VC Toucy in France this year, is currently in Morocco for some early season racing and took 17th in his first outing as a senior today.
The UCI 1.2-ranked Trophée de l'Anniversaire was a 125km affair starting and finish in Taroudante and featured a number of Continental level teams.
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The 90-rider field split to pieces and while Gray was aggressive and put in several attacks, he missed the 15-man breakaway that would escape to battle for the spoils.
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That lead group would further split late in the day, with five pressing on and Italian Umberto Marengo (Delio Gallina Colosio Eurofeed) winning solo by 15 seconds.
Gray's team mate, the young British rider Charlie Meredith, made the breakaway and would take 3rd place in the event some 20 seconds down.
What remained of the main field would finish five minutes behind the winner and just over 2½ minutes adrift of the second section of the original breakaway.
And with a very heavy attrition rate seeing a huge number of riders abandon once they had fallen far behind, Gray showed his resolve in continuing with the task at hand and was 17th on the day.
It was a decent ride by the young Irishman, who won the national junior road title last year.
His ability to finish should offer some relief as he had sat out a race – the first part of the Challenge du Prince series - in recent days in Morocco to give a knee problem time to right itself.
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