Isle of Man Tour 2017

This was my biggest goal of the season, and I was hoping for a Top 20 overall. Once the route maps were published, we discovered that Stage 3 had a 600m steep hill towards the end of the 4 km lap, and Stage 2 was flat. We travelled on the Friday, and got the ferry over to the Isle of Man, which meant that we had about an hour at our caravan before heading to Douglas Promenade. I signed on, and got prepared for the 1.3 km prologue. Just for this weekend, I was racing for West Wales Cycle Racing Team, as they had a team which on paper looked good to get a high result overall.

Stage 1

Prologues have never suited me, I’m not built for them. However, I knew that I needed a good result to make sure that I wasn’t far down the General Classification before the other two stages. Luckily the weather was nice, and I warmed up watching my rivals go out onto the course. It was a 2 minute fast effort, and I crossed the line in a time of 2.02 minutes. I finished 22nd, which I was pleased with, and it meant that I was in a good position going into Stage 2.

Stage 2

This was the stage I was looking forward to least as I could easily get dropped and lose all chances of a good GC finish. I started well, but every time done the finishing straight I was spinning at 120 rpm to keep up with the leaders. On the third lap, a rider touched a wheel in front of me and fell. There was no ‘Peter Sagan’ save and I went flying over the handlebars. After lying on the grass and wondering whether or not I was going to live for 5 minutes I got up and continued. Groups kept lapping me until with 2 laps to go, a massive group with all the U14 boys and U14 and U16 girls caught me. It felt like I was the lone break being caught by the peleton! I finished 50th, and lost all chance of a high GC finish.

Stage 3

I desperately wanted a top 20 finish to make up for the previous day’s disaster. Unfortunately I would be gridded 50th, which meant that my first lap would be chasing back on heading to the first climb. I managed to claw my way back almost to the front, but was in the 3rd group after the third lap. I stayed with this group for the majority of the race, and was amazed when Finlay Pickering lapped me. On the final climb I attacked with another rider, and we got a small lead. Unfortunately, the group were led back to us, and to make matters worse, my foot came out my pedal going around the last corner. I lost time and momentum, and ending up finishing 20th. While I was pleased with this, I felt like I could’ve finished higher on the stage and in reflection should’ve been in the group ahead. I finished 41st overall, which definitely wasn’t what I was looking for going into the race. Another annoying factor is that if I hadn’t of crashed, we would’ve won the team overall, when instead we came 2nd.