If you go alone from there to the finish, it’s far. Conor Dunne is first away for the Emerald Isle as others bridge across, we’ll wait ’til it gels before we list names – OK, they have daylight: Andriy Khripta (Ukraine), Jesse Sergent (New Zealand), Ivan Stevic (Serbia), Park Sung Baek (Korea) and Mr. Dunne.
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And now another three bridge; Sergei Tvetcov (Romania), Ben King (USA) and Carlos Alzate (Colombia) – that’s eight up front and the gap is yawning out over a pedestrian peloton.
For more than six hours, Peter Sagan was virtually invisible in the stream of cycling humanity that rocketed more than 160 miles through this city in the finale of cycling’s world championship. He can keep pace on climbs unlike any sprinter, and he packs one of the fastest finishes in the world.
“I had good legs but I missed it on that very last bit”, Swift continued.
But Sagan said it might be for the best that he didn’t win more: “If I trade all my second places for first, maybe no team can afford me”. Libby Hill; the break hurts – Majka charges at the head of the peloton with Kwiatkowski on his wheel as the break pass the 100 K to go mark.
The teams with full squads will try to determine the direction of the race, whether a breakaway of a few riders succeeds or whether the field is bunched up for a sprint finish. I want to just say this was very big motivation for me.
The bunch continued to chase and with 90 kilometres left it was all one big group again. I think that in the next years it can all be different.
The three leaders were caught just before Libby Hill, and during the climb, a number of top riders escaped.
Leading by 25 seconds, most assumed the leading group contained the victor, but the peloton somehow closed the gap during the climb of Libby Hill. The next ramp, 23rd Street and September Vanmarcke is trying his hard to bridge but to no avail…
GB lead the warp drive up the cobbles, it all pauses for drinks, 23rd Street now, Stannard attacks for GB – too soon, too soon. The Slovakian rider rode a brilliant final lap, attacking on the last big hill to get a gap, hurtling down the descent and then having enough left to hold off the chasing bunch to the line. Kreuziger leads the chase for Czech Republic and team mate, Stybar – his bike handling will be a big plus in the melee of the cobbled ramps. Home rider Taylor Phinney subsequently got away with four other riders before Ian Stannard made what looked to be a decisive move on lap 14, along with Bauke Mollema (Netherlands), Daniel Merino Fernandez (Spain), 2014 world champion Michal Kwiatkowski (Poland), Andrey Amador (Costa Rica) and Elia Viviani (Italy). They opened a seven second advantage, with Farrar appearing the strongest.
He was joined by John Dengekolb, with Greg Van Avermaet (Belgium) getting up to them. Ramunas Navardauskas of Lithuania took bronze.
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Members of the Russian cycling team ride during the Road Circuit Training portion of the UCI Road World Championships cycling races in Richmond, Va., Thursday, September 24, 2015.
