The An Post-Chain Reaction Sean Kelly Team took to the roads of Brittany, France this weekend for the Kreiz Breizh Elites UCI 2.2 stage race. The three day stage race consisted of three road stages and one individual time trial, based around central Brittany. Ronan Mc Laughlin, Sean Downey, Mark Mc Nally, Glenn O'Shea, Nicolas Vereecken and Alphonse Vermotte were the six riders on the start-list for the team.
Stage one was 194km long from Calanhel-Plouray, it was to be quite a difficult stage with more than 2000m of climbing and very poor weather conditions. The pace of the race was very high for the whole stage and the tough nature of the parcours meant that many breakaways went clear only to come back again just as quick, before a large group finally went clear including Mark and Nicolas. This group split before the final KOM of the day and Nicolas managed to get himself into the front group coming onto the finishing laps.
As the group whittled down further on the tough finishing laps, the stage was to be decided in a sprint from the leading group. Nicolas took sixth on the stage and afterwards was disappointed in how he had positioned himself for the sprint but was quite happy to have made the front group which gained more than thirty vital seconds on the next group on the road.
Early on Sunday morning the riders had the 12km time trial to tackle. It was not a typical time trial with quite a lot of climbing and some sharp descents to be tackled before a tough final kilometre climb to the finish line. Weather conditions hadn't improved at all from stage one and the riders once again had to complete the stage in pouring rain, making the already tricky course that little bit more so.
Ronan was the first rider from the team off with a very early 8:50am start. Alphonse was very unlucky in his time trial to suffer a puncture on the first climb and lost a lot of time through that. Nicolas was the last rider from the team to start after his top ten placing the day before and came close to another top ten with an eleventh placed time. This good time trial performance moved him up to third overall.
On Sunday afternoon the riders had a "short" road stage of 106km.The wind had really picked up compared to the conditions for the time trial that morning and all the riders where preparing themselves for some echelons typical of racing in windy conditions.
The conditions on the roads though didn't turn out to be as bad as first feared and the stage was always looking likely to finish in a bunch sprint. The team tried to get organised to do a lead out for Nicolas but with the final kilometres all on small twisting roads it was to be a difficult task.
Nicolas managed to get himself into a perfect position coming into the final corner with less than 300m to go but when the rider just in front of him took a poor line through the corner Nicolas had to brake hard to avoid crashing and this hampered his sprint, he did however cross the line in seventh place, good enough to maintain his third place overall. Nicolas was very frustrated after the finish as he was certain he had the sprint to win the stage if it hadn't been for the misfortune on the final corner.
That left just Monday's final stage of 175km to Rostrenen for the riders. Once again the weather conditions were quite bad with a lot of heavy rainfall, but as one of the riders put it "at least it was warm". As it was the final stage the whole peloton was very keen to race hard and the pace was very high for most of the stage.
Mark managed to get himself into the main breakaway of the day and was trying to keep his legs as fresh as possible on the tough parcours so that if the stage was to be decided by the breakaway he would have a good chance of taking the win after the six finish laps in Rostrenen.
It wasn't to be for Mark however, as the Rabobank team of the race leader kept the break under the two minute mark for most of the stage, helped on occasion by some other teams who had missed the break. Coming onto the finishing laps it was clear Mark’s break would not succeed and the team then tried to help Nicolas get in a move to potentially gain some time and move up in the classification.
Unfortunately despite the best efforts of all the team, the G.C. riders kept each other close by all the way to the finish and the stage was to be decided by a small two man breakaway that had gone clear in the closing stages. Nicolas crossed the line in ninth position to secure his 3rd place podium position. It was a fantastic performance from Nicolas who had managed to place himself in the top ten of every stage of this tough race.