Hello and welcome to the 2nd edition of the Ronde van Het IJsselmeer, which is a C2 event this year, stepping down from HC. However making that step also is defending champion Dan Holloway, who surprised many with a late attack which saw him solo in ahead of a hard-chasing Luke Rowe. This year he has dominated the CT in sprints, meaning he;s a heavy favourite no matter what kind of race we get today. Erik Mohs leads the field in terms of other sprinters, whilst there is a variety of roleurs who might look to pounce in a moment of weakness for the peloton also.
Sunny September skies and 44km/h winds here at the start, more than a gentle breeze but not quite reaching last year's speeds of 64km/h which guttered the pack - though there's still hours for it to speed up!
Isn't that where Henry Vergnaud met Michelle?
The first breakaway attempt is the one which survives, consisting of Flaksis and Ravasi, with just the two of them over the next 220km it's a hard ask, but the former has some credit in the cobbled classics and I don't dar make a fool of myself by writing them off just yet!
With 200km to go as they pass the finish line before their big lap, theu jabe a sp;od gap of 3'55 and rising. For those of you wondering if it's not worth going for a walk or playing a board game with your family for the next couple of hours, let me just say the wind is dying down to around 30km/h, and I don't expect anything to happen for a while, but I've been wrong before - just go watch any race I've done involving Rui Vinhas!
Can't we just moooove to the good part?
100km to go and the gap is under four minutes, regulated by a comittee chase, lead by VIP Mobile, Euskaltel and GCN, with occasional input from other teams. The wind still a decent but inoffensive 30-35km/h.
90km to and 3'10 the gap.
80km and 2'31
70km and 2'14
60km and 1'43
50km and 1'22
Oh thank god. Someone's doing something - it's Kaupas from the always active amateurs Adriatica attacking, actual action at last!
La Vie Claire are the biggest rivals to Adriatica's bid for the amateur title and perhaps this is why they have sent Nikolcevic after the Lithuanian - do third-placed Signal Iduna have anything to say about this, or are they waiting for a sprint with Dupont or Mansilla?
Surprisingly it's not one of Signal Iduna's roleurs who follows, or any roleur actually - it's Bogdanovics, the CYBEX leader! Maybe he's inspired by Holloway's efforts as a sprinter playing a new role last year, maybe's he's stupid - I think it's both, but it sure is more entertaining than another row of tulips!
VIP Mobile turn the pace up to eleven and all three are soon caught unfortunately, and the morning breakaway duo will follow soon - 32km left and they have just 20 seconds!
Before they can be caught, though, it's Palyi, followed by Reckweg, Kivumbi and Veyhe, launching yet another attack!
However too many cooks have spoilt the broth here, a long line of would-be escapees means they never really escape the peloton, and all they do is reel in the breakaway themselves as they pass the start line. 22km to go and it looks like we might see our first ever sprint finish in this race, the peloton is all still together and the wind is still not high enough be very decisive!
Euskaltel, McCormick and GCN have nearly their whole teams assembling near the front with 10km to go, every other sprinter seems to be preparing to fight for the wheels of their leaders, with at most one teammate for help really! With the big teams in control does anyone have any cards left to play before the final three kilometres?
Yes, and it's another OMV rider, Taubel, perhaps their sprint duo isn't feeling too hot? He's left this very late with just 4km remaining - or has he timed it to perfection with the sprint trains still yet to really form? He's followed closely by Quispe, Kivumbi, and Marcos - the same few teams animating the race today really!
Weiss, Albert, Veyhe and Kal all try to follow as well, but once again this just creates a long tail to the attack which means they never actually leave the peloton. However this has even further disrupted the three sprint trains which are yet to form, and so this could be a very messy sprint!
However we do see them now with 2.3km to go, it's Jakobsen-Fonseca-Moser edging ahead of Frankovic-Sweeting-Holloway, whilst Welten-Szalontay-Mohs languishes behind and every other sprinter fails to join onto any of them, putting Moser and Holloway in pole positions! The former definitely with the more pure sprint power leading him out.
And indeed Euskaltel slightly opening a bigger lead on McCormick with 1800m left, whilst the neo-pro Welten has doen a great job getting GCN back in the game, still two bike lengths behind though. Every other team's hopes seem pinned on that train currently, Drapac and Sobota leading a long line of sprinters on the wheel of Mohs.
Euskaltel and McCormick's trains go straight through each other, miraculously without crashing, and the Basques manage to box in GCN, and in turn every other sprinter but Holloway! However the Americans try to double-cross them and the wily Frankovic swerves in front of the more youthful Jakobsen! This is interesting - especially given there's just 1.2km remaining and all three top sprinters still have two riders in their way, not ideal now and so it will be but a brief cameo for their second man if they want to launch at the right time!
Meanwhile Dockx (with no sign of leader Granjel Cabrera) and Bogdanovics are tying to bridge across to McCormick and Euskaltel, whilst Kal is going for a 1500m sprint on the other side of the road followed by the other members of Taubel's would-be escape group.
700m to go and the structure has burst, McCormick playing it excellently with a brief crack from Sweeting putting Holloway as the first top gun to launch and in a dream position, whilst Drapac has made his way to the right hand side along with Szalontay, who has abandoned Mohs in favour of a two-pronged approach, whilst Moser is stuck behind the front row and still his own teammate Fonseca - unless Mohs finds the gap on the left and the sprint of his life in his legs, it looks like it's Holloway vs Szalontay vs Drapac!
Drapac surprisingly seems on par with Holloway with 400m left, meanwhile Szalontay doesn't seem to have the legs for it and tucks in behind the American, while his teammate Mohs has followed Drapac in moving to the right and is lurking behind Drapac, he has speed but is running out of road to come around! Moser is going down the left with a clear run at the line, but seems slower and further behind than the German. In the battle for the rest of the top 10 it's still Kal leading as Sweeting drifts back, followed by Quispe (apparently Equinor's sprint hope despite having three actual ones), Boganovics, Young (presumptive OMV leader with no sign of Krieger), Dockx, Sobota and Tleubayev.
Wow, Damion Drapac is outpacing Holloway and he could come around for the win over the American! Mohs can't seem to come around the red-hot Aussie and will fight his teammate and Moser for third it seems, whilst Kal is doing brilliantly to still lead the fight for sixth!
Drapac is a bit faster, but is still a wheel behind Holloway and is running out of road to come around, does he have a second wind left in him? Szalontay has capitulated and so it's Mohs leading Moser, the extra syllable seems to be slowing the Italian down compared to his rival!
100m to go, Drapac just half a wheel behind now and still gaining on the defending champ, but he's not going to be fast enough!
And so Daniel Holloway wins here in Enkhuizen for the second year running after his team delivered him perfectly to the 700m mark, and the American delivered a cool finish. A great result for Drapac, who perhaps will feel he had the legs for a win today, but I hope can be proud of himself in such a tight field, with one of the best C2 outings for any PCT team so far.
Erik Mohs is fairly comfortably third ahead of Moreno Moser. Like Drapac the former showed perhaps better top speed than Holloway (though he was using the draft more than either of those ahead), however the GCN leadout really let him down and meant the German was never really in contention. Moser was for a long while but the Euskaltel leadout fell off late on, and he couldn't hold off Mohs for speed in the sprint and has to settle for a par, but still dissapointing, fourth.
Not disappointed at all will be Signal Iduna and Mirac Kal, defying the odds with a fantastic show of sprint endurance, fighting the lactic acid to get a top 5 finish with a sprint basically double the length of anyone else and after attacking earlier - good use of the draft to stay in contention I guess and a huge result for his amateur team.
Young and Bogdanovics showed the best speed of the rest, neither should feel too disappointed with sixth and seventh respectively, particularly the latter who of course spent a few kilometres on the attack earlier in the day. Quispe, also involved in earlier moves, is a surprising and impressive eighth, his team's sprinters and Ratto let themselves down but he has salvaged something for them. Tleubayev is a solid ninth, whilst Ethan Weiss edges out Kristian Sobota to round out the top 10 and increae McCormick's joy with some depth scoring. Albert (14th) and Marcos (16th) do the same for Minions after Drapac's podium, whilst the likes of Boev (15th), Carsi (21st), Vingerling (54th) and Krieger (25th, at least having Young in the top 10) are all dissapointments of various degrees.
So not the brutal and entertaining classic of last year, in fact a rather dull affair for 90% of it, but the result here by the IJsselmeer is the same both times: Dan Holloway tastes victory - then a solo, here a textbook sprint win after his leadout, pointed out as the weakest part of his profile pre-race, delivered him perfectly into the final 700m. Your move, Eastman.
