Bevin shows star quality as he blazes a trail across Munster
The international track rider, who blitzed the field on Monday’s second stage from Roscommon to Lisdoonvarna and came in almost two minutes ahead of the next-best rider, was just as impressive on the road from Charleville to south Kerry yesterday when he led a fragmented peloton home after a brutally hard day.
The riders had to contend with 10 climbs and 183 kilometres and had the category one Coomanaspic near Portmagee to climb after 100 miles.
But Bevin made light of the hilly route — as well as losing teammate Marc Ryan to illness overnight — to hunt down the day’s 12-man breakaway that gained a maximum advantage of two minutes, and beat all comers in the sprint to the line.
Second on the stage was last year’s winner Marcin Bialoblocki (Britain Velosure Giordana), while Peter Williams (France Bretagne Velotec) took third on a day that saw no major shake-up on General Classification.
“That was a very special win,” said an elated Bevin. “We lost our most experienced riders last night with sickness but the way the others on the team rode today was so inspiring. We sat at the front of the bunch all day and kept the break at a gap that wasn’t too big and just slowly reeled them in as the race pushed on towards the line,” he added.
The day proved so hard that only around 35 riders were in contention to win and though Bevin would have kept the yellow jersey by just finishing in that front bunch, he felt a duty to the team to win, after they rode so hard for him to preserve his lead.
“You’ve no idea what my teammates did for me today. Trust me, riding on the front like that over six climbs with no help for 100kms is hard work and they were all absolutely spent at the finish. They were on their hands on knees so when I saw the ‘5k to go’ sign, I decided: ‘I’m going for this’.”
Bevin is best known for sprinting, and having worked his way into position in the final few kilometres, he hit out for home inside 300m to go. No one could match his burst of speed.
In that group sprinting for the win was Corkman Eoin McCarthy of the VisitNenagh.ie team who took the county rider award, while Tuesday’s breakaway man Damien Shaw leads the overall in that competition from his Aquablue teammate, Sean Lacey.
While the early part of the stage was characterised by breaks clipping off the front, there was constant regrouping and it wasn’t until the riders had around 70km of the stage completed that a decisive move went clear.
There were 12 men in it, riders representing 11 different teams from the Netherlands, Austria, Canada and Britain, amongst others, while three county men once again made the move; Donegal’s Ronan McLaughlin (Donegal Inishowen Gateway Mccafe), Kerry’s Eugene Moriarty (Dublin North Team 39 Spin 11) and Mayo’s Patrick Clarke (Mayo South Centra).
They all rode well together, however, the effort began to take its toll.
Moriarty, who took an Intermediate Hot Spot Sprint in Killorglin — was first to get shelled out the back after around 150kms before Clarke and McLaughlin tailed off on the climb of Coomanaspic.
Bevin and his teammates mopped up all riders up front — and forced many more to be spat out the back. They’ll take some stopping, based on form.
Today’s stage takes the riders 168kms from Caherciveen to Clonakilty and features five categorised climbs.
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