June 15/23 18:43 pm - New Leader After Stage 2 of Tour de Beauce
Posted by Editoress on 06/15/23
A gutsy solo move in the last 20 kilometres of Stage 2 of the Tour de Beauce earned Cormac McGeough (EC Makadence Primeau Velo) his first ever UCI victory, and the Yellow Jersey of race leader. The Irish national won the stage by 20 seconds ahead of Evan Russell (Cycling BC) and Stage 1 winner Matisse Julien (Ecoflo Chronos) and that, together with the ten second stage win bonus was enough to put him one second ahead of both Russell and Julien in the overall standings. Julien keeps the other three jerseys - Points, Climber and Best Young Rider.
The 169 kilometre stage was one big square circuit; a completely new course for the Tour de Beauce. The day started out wet and misty, with temperatures in the mid-teens, and did not improve until right at the finish line, when the sun finally came out.
The weather appeared to discourage attacks in the early part of the race, with nothing going clear for more than 40 kilometres. Russell, who came close to winning the opening stage with a breakaway, started the first significant move of the day and was joined by seven others. The gap grew to two minutes by the KoM at 96 kilometres before Julien's Ecoflo team and second placed Tyler Stites' Project Echelon squad picked up the pace to shut things down with 43 kilometres to go.
Early break
Final break
A new break quickly formed, with ten riders going up the road, including McGeough. At the 25 kilometre to go mark the gap was up to 1:10, and Ecoflo and Project Echelon looked to be running out of power to chase it down. The break contained a rider from each of those teams, who were not contributing to the effort, so McGeough launched off on his own, while the rest of the group slowly disintegrated and were caught by the shrinking peloton.
McGeough checks the gap
McGeough kept ticking off the kilometres; never more than 35 seconds ahead, but strong enough to hold off the bunch. Heading up the final 500 metre climb to the finish line it was clear that McGeough had the stage win, but would it be enough of a gap to take the jersey - he started the day 25 seconds down on Julien. McGeough crossed the line 20 seconds in front of the chasers, taking a ten second bonus, but Julien managed to finish third, just behind Russell, which netted him a four second bonus - the math put McGeough into the leader's jersey by a slim second.
"Things were pretty chaotic with 35-40K to go," explained McGeough. "The Yellow Jersey team was struggling to control things, and Project Echelon ... the two teams were looking at each other a lot. I'm kind of flying under the radar a bit, so I went solo with about 40K to go and a small group came up to me before we started up the final KoM."
"There was an Echelon guy and a [Ecoflo] guy, so there wasn't much cohesion, so I attacked again with about 20K to go. I just went really, really hard and kept it nice and steady; that's kind of my speciality. It doesn't always work out; it's probably the hardest way to win a bike race, but, oh my god, it's so rewarding when it finally pays off. It's really satisfying to finally win my first UCI race, and to win here at Tour de Beauce."
Tour de Beauce: Stage 2 results
Matisse Julien Sweeps the Jerseys on Stage 1 of Beauce
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