Although his group didn’t stay clear until the finish, Irishman Philip Deignan has taken encouragement from his performance on Friday’s sixth leg of the Presidential Tour of Turkey.
The UnitedHealthcare Maxxis rider made it into an initial break of twenty riders then, shortly before the Turkish Beauties sprint at the Temple of Apollo in Didim, he pushed on ahead with Maxim Belkov (Katusha) and Michal Golas (Omega Pharma-Quick Step).
“Just when we were being brought back, I went away with two other guys,” he told VeloNation in a video interview conducted shortly after the finish. “It was still over 100 kilometres to go and really, really strong headwind and a straight road. To be honest I thought we were wasting our time.”
However the trio stayed out from for almost all of the remainder of the stage, building a maximum lead of two minutes sixty kilometres from the finish, then maintaining a gap despite some extraordinarily aggressive racing behind.
The adventure finally came to an end with eight kilometres to go, when the group was finally gobbled up. Despite being caught, Deignan said that he’s encouraged by the performance.
His preparation for the race was affected by a bad stomach problem he had in the buildup, and the aftereffects of that blunted his climbing power on the race’s main mountain leg. He was 24th there but believes he would otherwise have been higher up.
“I was disappointed on the third stage. I felt really good, but my stomach reacted badly to the energy gels,” he explained. “I really suffered in the last ten kilometres. That was disappointing, but at least I know now the legs are there for California.”
The Amgen Tour of California is one of his main goals for this season. He has been named as one of UnitedHealthcare’s leaders for the race, and will seek to light things up on the climbs there.
The Irishman has been hamped by illness and injury at times, but is aiming this year to return to the form that saw him win a stage and finishing ninth overall in the 2009 Vuelta a Espana. He finished in the main bunch on Saturday and is 21st overall in Turkey heading into Sunday’s final stage in Istanbul.
See the video below for Deignan’s full interview after stage six.