The 196 kilometre stage from Powerscourt to Waterford saw Downing edge out the Saxo Bank duo of Alexandr Kolobnev and Matti Breschel respectively.
Cervélo TestTeam’s Philip Deignan had the team’s best result today with a strong 4th place finish. Tomorrow’s second stage travels from Clonmel to Killarney (196 kilometres) with the race ending Sunday in a stage to Cork.
“One rider, a guy from South Africa named Jay Thomson, was alone for a long time today. At his maximum he had a gap of more than 5 minutes,” said Jens Zemke, Sports Director.
“On the last 2nd category climb with 40 km to go, Astana was riding pretty hard. At the top there was group of 23 riders, 3 of them from our team; home rider Philip Deignan, Daniel Lloyd and Gabriel Rasch and this group made it to the finish. As we had no sprinters in this group we were riding offensively, so we attacked and we stayed in the attacks and at the end with 2 km to go the group was down to 7 riders who came in with a couple of seconds on the riders behind them at the finish. In that group we had Philip, who was very motivated since he was participating in his home race. The winner of the day was Russell Downing in front of Saxo riders Kolobnev and Breschel. Philip ended in fourth place. I am happy about today and can certainly live with a fourth place finish. We had no sprinter in the front group so we had to ride on the offensive and we managed it. We tried to work hard today for Philip. The last stage is a hard one with a first category climb that is short and right before the finish. As it now stands the race is still open for the GC.”
Stage 1 Results:
1st Russell Downing 5:10:37 37.86 km/h
2nd Alexandr Kolobnev +0.01
3rd Matti Breschel s.t.
4th Philip Deignan s.t.
5th Haimar Zubeldia s.t.
General Classification after Stage 1:
1st Russell Downing 5:10:27 37.88 km/h
2nd Alexandr Kolobnev +0.05
3rd Matti Breschel +0.07
