Great Britain Cycling Team’s Gabriel Cullaigh and Alex Peters maintained their top twenty general classification positions after stage one of the Tour de l’Avenir on Sunday.
Following Saturday’s prologue, Sunday saw the first road stage of the Tour of the Future, billed as the Tour de France for under-23 riders, the culmination of the season-long UCI Under 23 Nations’ Cup.
Stage one saw riders endure bouts of heavy rain as they took on 160.5 kilometres from Chablis to Toucy, with two fourth-category climbs, the Cote de Vezelay at 69.5 kilometres and the Cote de Toucy at 149.7 kilometres.
Stage victory went to Jonas Koch of Germany who broke away after around 30 kilometres of racing and extended his lead to over 12 minutes before Switzerland’s Gian Friesecke and Mads Pedersen of Denmark instigated the chase.
Friesecke and Pedersen were joined by six further riders; David Per (Slovenia), Michal Paluta (Poland), Elie Gesbert, Jeremy House, William Martin and Nans Peters (France) who hovered between Koch and the peloton as the race entered its final phase – a circuit around the finish town including the second of the day’s two category four climbs.
With the race coming to its climax the chasers were swept up but the peloton had underestimated the strength of Koch who hung on to take the win by 11 seconds. Mads Wurtz Schmidt (Denmark) took the runner-up spot with Italy’s Simone Consonni completing the podium at the head of the peloton.
Alex Peters was the first Great Britain rider home, finishing in 30th position on the same time as Consonni, with Steve Williams, Gabriel Cullaigh and Mark Stewart also finishing in the peloton.
Awesome @BritishCycling team here at l'avenir! #teamwork pic.twitter.com/pCYMV4y5tl
— Alex Peters (@alexpeters_94) August 23, 2015
Chris Lawless ended the stage six minutes and 37 seconds behind the winner, with Jake Kelly losing eight minutes and 55 seconds.
The result meant that prologue winner Soren Kragh Andersen of Denmark retained his yellow jersey with Gabriel Cullaigh the best placed Great Britain rider on general classification, in 15th place, 11 seconds adrift of the race leader, with Alex Peters 20th a further two seconds back.
The race continues on Monday with the 193.5-kilometre stage two from Avallon to Arbois.
