British Olympic hopeful Andy Tennant was left ruing bad luck as crashes hit Team Wiggins’ hopes of success in the second Tour de Yorkshire.
Tennant, from Wolverhampton but a member of the British Cycling Academy in Manchester, crashed in the early stages of the race and saw two of his teammates, including Sir Bradley Wiggins, abandon the race.
Former team pursuit world champion Tennant rode on to the finish after his crash but was downhearted after a day tackling difficult weather conditions on the 187km ride from Beverley to Settle, as Dutchman Dylan Groenewegen won the stage.
“It has been a bit of a disappointing day,” said Tennant, who is 78th in the overall standings
“We lost Scott [Davies] in a crash early on, I crashed and Brad was also in that crash so it wasn’t a great start.
“Our main general classification contender was Scott so he is out of the race and off to hospital to have a check on his collarbone – not an ideal start.”
Saturday’s second stage sees riders race 135.5km from Otley to Doncaster and Sunday could decide the overall race with a 198km race from Middlesbrough to Scarborough.
Despite the early setback Tennant is hopeful of better results over the weekend.
“Looking at the form though, Mark Christian was going really well at the end so I think for that final day on Sunday he should be looking good and hopefully we can get something,” he said.
“It was a tough day, with the headwind I thought it might have been a bit easier, but it wasn’t.
“Our power cranks to measure how hard of a day it was, it gives you a number of watts at the end of the day and it was 310, which is pretty high.”
Tennant is targeting gold on the track at the Rio Olympic Games this summer alongside Sir Bradley in the team pursuit, but on a rare foray into road racing he was excited to see the amount of support for the Tour de Yorkshire, which includes Yorkshire Bank as an official partner.
“Recovery is the main thing now,” he said.
“But the support and the fans out on the road is huge here.
“It’s the biggest race in the UK easily and to get that many people out, especially in this weather, it is fantastic and certainly spurs the peloton on.”
Yorkshire Bank is an Official Partner of the Tour de Yorkshire and the ground-breaking Yorkshire Bank Bike Libraries initiative. Visit www.ybonline.co.uk/tdy
Image courtesy of British Heart Foundation, via YouTube, with thanks
