GEDIMINAS BAGDONAS (An Post Sean Kelly) emerged as the overall winner of the An Post Rás, a mere 32 seconds ahead of Anatoliy Pakhtusov (Ukraine ISD-Lampre) on general classification after eight tough days.

RACE LEADER Gediminas Bagdonas (Belgium An Post/Sean Kelly) thanked Irish team-mate Sam Bennett for helping him hang on to the yellow jersey by the slender margin of 32 seconds as the sixth stage of the An Post Rás ended in Tramore yesterday after an action-packed 104-mile trip from Blarney.

MYRON SIMPSON of the New Zealand national team claimed yesterday’s sixth stage of the An Post Rás from Castletownbere to Blarney with a stunning sprint victory into one of the most storied towns in Irish cycling.

LITHUANIAN rider Gediminas Bagdonas of the An Post Sean Kelly team holds a one minute and 16 second lead at the halfway point of the Rás after he defended the yellow jersey by winning the fourth stage into Castletownbere in miserable conditions yesterday.

THE second stage of the An Post Rás from Portumna to Kilrush was just over 101 miles but a stormforce headwind turned it into a real test of endurance and if ever there was a worthy stage winner, it was Gediminas Bagdonas, a member of the An Post/Sean Kelly team while Shane Archbold of the New Zealand National Team took the race leader’s yellow jersey.

An Post Sean Kelly team manager Kurt Bogaerts today named his team for the 59th edition of the Rás, which starts in Dunboyne this Sunday.

A LITHUANIAN man told gardaí he shoved an iron bar up another man’s rectum and then urinated on him to make little of him — as is, he said, the tradition in his country — because he owed him money for drugs, a trial in Galway heard yesterday.

A Lithuanian national has been convicted of raping and threatenting to kill a 24-year-old Latvian woman.