Relentless Damien Shaw rides into another jersey in France
An Post-Chainreaction's Damien Shaw out front and on his way to another jersey in France this afternoon.
Damien Shaw has been on the attack in France again and this time has collected two classification leader’s jerseys.
Fresh from his stage 1 win and three day in yellow at the Tour du Loir et Cher (2.2), Shaw went up the road in Le Tour de Bretagne Cycliste (2.2) today.
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He held on until the death, only being swallowed up by the peloton with 150 metres remaining as he led solo.
However, his disappointment was softened by his claiming the climbers’ and combined classification jerseys.
The An Post-Chainreaction rider is full of confidence and clearly has great legs at present.
Today’s first stage of seven took the riders 153,2km from Rennes to Merdrinac. Shaw told stickybottle his plan was to take the climbers primes.
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However, when he got clear after about 30km he was joined by only one other rider, Ruben Zepuntker of Sunweb Development Team.
Shaw's fellow escapee has some fantastic results in his palmares. He rode with Cannondale-Drapac for the last three years.
The Irishman and German rider managed to pulled out a gap of over four minutes today, with the peloton seemingly content to let a two-group clear.
Let the party begin; Damien Shaw gets to grips with a bottle of champagne on the podium this afternoon.
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Shaw duly took the climbers’ primes at the 58km and 85km markers. And while he expected to be caught a lot sooner than he was, pressed on in pursuit of another stage win and yellow jersey.
“I thought we'd have a few more joining us but the peloton sat up and the gap went out very quickly to four minutes,” he said.
“My plan was to take the climbers’ jersey and I thought we'd be swallowed up after that.
“But the peloton took a long time to get organised. And with 15km to go we still had 2:30.”
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At that point two laps of the finishing circuit remained and Shaw had reason to believe another major success was in the offing.
“With one lap done that came down to a minute and with 5k to go it was still 40 seconds.”
Damien Shaw goes solo 5km out
He dropped the 24-year-old German, a former junior and U23 international, with about 5km remaining.
At that point he buried himself and very nearly landed the win.
“I held off the peloton until about 150 metres to go,” he said. “The last kilometre had a fast descent into the finish which didn't help my cause.”
“But I took the climbers’ and the combined jersey. And got my face on the TV and a couple of bottles of champagne for my troubles. The 200km stage tomorrow should be fun.”
Damien Shaw leads the climbers' classification from Zepuntke and Filippo Pozzato (Wilier Triestina). The Italian was 8th in the Tour of Flanders and was a top flight WorldTour rider for years.
Shaw finished in the bunch after being caught, with the stage won in a bunch sprint by 20-year-old Dutchman Bram Welten (BMC Development).
And thanks to time bonuses he earned while on the attack, Shaw is 4th overall, some 4 seconds behind the race leader.
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