Vuelta a España stage winner Philip Deignan has just three races left this season and is hoping for a good finish before he takes a well-deserved break back home in Letterkenny, Ireland.
On Saturday the 26 year old will join Cervélo Test Team riders Dan Fleeman, Ignatas Konovalovas, Joaquin Novoa, Serge Pauwels, Martin Reimer and Marcel Wyss in the 1.1-ranked Sparkassen Munsterland. “There is a lot of travelling to get to this one day race,” he told Velonation. “Then I head back to Girona for ten days before the Giro del Piemonte and Lombardy [the Giro di Lombardia]. I’d like to aim for a good result there.”
Deignan is still recharging his batteries after riding two Grand Tours in the same season, a first for him. He crashed five times in the Giro but finished a solid 56th overall, and was fifth on stage 14 behind his team-mate Simon Gerrans. The Vuelta was the clear highlight, with the Irishman landing a stage victory ahead of Roman Kreuziger plus ninth overall in Madrid.
On Sunday Deignan competed in the Elite world championship road race in Mendrisio, Switzerland. He was still fatigued after the Vuelta and finished 40th. While the winner Cadel Evans clearly recovered in time, Deignan has done far fewer Grand Tours and would have preferred a bit longer between the two races. Still, he is happy with his decision to continue until Madrid.
“Ideally you’d have ten or twelve days to recover, but I wasn’t going to sacrifice the Vuelta for the Worlds,” he said. “Spain was always a bigger target for me.”
Deignan’s performances in the Vuelta were the best Irish Grand Tour showings since Stephen Roche won a stage in the 1992 Tour de France and finished ninth overall in the following year’s Giro d’Italia.
That plus the strong performances posted by Daniel Martin and Roche’s son Nicolas this year mean that Irish cycling is looking like it is getting back on track after a long period of smaller results.