An Post Chain Reaction Team rider Shane Archbold secures victory at stage 2 of An Post Ras.
Yesterday’s stage two of the 2013 An Post Ras saw a welcome win for the An Post – ChainReaction team onboard thier Vitus bikes with former World Cup omnium winner, Shane Archbold sprinting to victory. The stage finish was incredibly tight with An Post – Chain Reaction’s Archbold leading into the final stretch, edging out Marcin Bialoblocki (UK Youth) and Belgian National team rider Jasper de Buyst.
With the weather holding out throughout the day the relatively flat stage once again saw the average speed close to 30mph. CRC sponsored riders Sam Bennett and Ronan McLaughlin quickly formed a breakaway group of 12 launching the first attack of the day.
At 60km, the breakaway group was caught with more attacks following none of which were successful. With just less than 40km to go, the lead and chasing groups merged, forming a front bunch of 40+ riders including the yellow jersey . Archbold attacked from the chasing group, breaking away along with Samuel Harrison (Great Britain National Team), Rasmus Guldhammer (Denmark Blue Water Cycling) and Lars Vierbergen (Holland Koga Cycling).
The Flying Kiwi was delighted with his win thanking the work of the An Post – Chain Reaction team for their support
“I’m thrilled with the win. I was injured at the start of the year and haven’t had too much racing with the way the injury fell but my form has come good. I spent the last three weeks in Holland getting into good shape so it seems to have paid off. It was a great team effort today. We missed the vital breakaway yesterday so we were disappointed about that and made sure we had two riders in every breakaway today. Thankfully it worked and we’ll just keep on focusing on stage wins for the rest of the week”