Pais Vasco - Roche and Deignan

Dura Ace

Solid start from Roche and Deignan in the the Basque country, coming in ahead of Sastre, A Schleck, Vandevelde and Gerdemann amongst others. It's interesting to see how they (and Daniel Martin) rank according to the old UCI ranking system

http://www.cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/start.asp

which was much better than the Protour ranking IMO. They are all making good progress up the rankings, and I feel that we are going to have at least one of them at the start of the Tour.

RobFowl

Duignan has surprised me a lot this year. I was surprised he even got a decent contract but fair play to him he seems to be delivering the results.
Roche looks on the verge of a big win
The Sean Kelly guys have been anonymous so far though apart from O Loughlin's world cup silver and bronzes on the track
Think this is is make or break for Paudi O Brien and Mark Cassidy especially.

Dura Ace

Have to agree about the Sean Kelly lads. What Irish are the next potential signings for the An Post team, Lavery, Bennett? The top Irish lads over the last few years have all come through VC La Pomme, although the An Post team did give Dan Lloyd and Dan Fleeman a good break.

With Deignan, it might be a combination of becoming stale with Ag2R, and just having a good injury and sickness-free run.

Junior

The An Post guys aren't riding at the same level as Roche and Deignan - it's just an academy team so I'm not sure what exactly your expecting from them ? Eeckhout had a
good result in Dwar Doors Vlaanderen, the irish lads are still quiet young but I'll be honest I don't think Paidi will do much more like.

Bennett is going to France after college is over this year.

I'm not to surprised at Deignan to be honest but he's a good cyclist once he stays injury free.

RobFowl

Junior wrote: »

The An Post guys aren't riding at the same level as Roche and Deignan - it's just an academy team so I'm not sure what exactly your expecting from them ? .

Really at this stage (both 3 years at conti level) they should be getting placings regularly in 1.2 and 2.2 races at least. Lloyd and Fleeman showed how it should be done. The SKT delivers a good program of racing to allow the riders to impress bigger teams. Ideally they should be there for 1-2 seasons then move on.

decrrrrrr

Stage 2 placing for the two lads below:

Deignan finished 47th in main bunch, Roche over 13 minutes down which was last postion..!!!

Seen Deignan training on Stephens Day up in Donegal. There was an article in the local paper a few weeks ago too where he was interviewed. He touches on the fact that he was injury free at the start of the season and this has really helped.

Junior

Roche had an asthma attack with 40k to go hence his position