Jeremy Roy (Francaise des Jeux) took top honors at Sunday's Tro-Bro Léon in Brittany. The race, nicknamed the Paris-Roubaix Breton and the Petit Paris-Roubaix, is one of the hardest races of the year on the French racing calendar and takes in some of the best and worst roads Brittany has to offer: from coastal expanses on pavement, to dirt farm paths through hard working fields.
The race, run for the first time in 1984 as an amateur race, and for the first time as a professional race in 2000, is crammed into the extreme northwestern tip of France, is highlighted by 26 sectors of ribin, a torrid combination of dirt, cobbles, and gravel. The ribin total 34.2 km of the total tally of 205.5 km.
Tro-Bro Leon served as the sixth round of the Coupe de France series, coming only one day after Round 5, the Tour du Finistere. Cofidis' Leonard Duque entered the day as leader of the Coupe de France, but only just. The day before at the Tour du Finistere, Duque took a solid second behind Bretagne-Sculler's Florian Vachon. Vachon's victory put him only four points behind Duque going into Sunday's dirt road festival. After 5th place from Vachon on Sunday was enough to swipe the lead from Duque.
The many sectors of non-pavement did their job throughout the day and whittled the group down to a still unwieldy tally of around 30 in the latter part of the race. This group was further shaved down to an elite selection of nine with 30k to go, from which Roy made his move with 5 kilometers to go. He kept a handful of seconds all the way to the line to take a fine solo victory.
Roy, 10th yesterday at Finistere, got it right on Sunday: "Winning the Tro-Bro Léon is a dream. I was not expecting too much. I tried my luck in the finale and it paid off. I did not want to play with all the sprinters in the front. [Attacking in the finale] did not work yesterday, but it worked today!"
Results Tro Bro-Leon
1 Jérémy Roy (Française des Jeux)
2 Renaud Dion (Roubaix-Lille Métropole)
3 Lloyd Mondory (AG2R-La Mondiale)
4 Jean-Luc Delpech (Bretagne-Schuller)
5 Florian Vachon (Bretagne-Schuller)
6 Benoit Daeninck (Roubaix-Lille Métropole)
7 Cyril Lemoine (Saur-Sojasun)
8 Perig Quemeneur (Bbox Bouygues Telecom)
9 Romain Lemarchand (BigMat-Auber 93)