British Wanty-Groupe Gobert rider Mark McNally has said he’s not frustrated with the result of yesterday’s stage at the Eneco Tour, in which he and his breakaway companions were caught by the peloton within sight of the finish line.
The 27-year-old had been out front all day with Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling), Jesper Asselman (Roompot), Stijn Steels (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise) and Yukiya Arashiro (Lampre-Merida) and the quintet held an advantage of 30 seconds with one kilometre to go but as they looked at each other to work the peloton roared up on them and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) took the victory.
McNally placed fifth on the stage - the highest place of those in the break - and would have stood a good chance of chalking up his first win in a WorldTour race had the bunch not caught the breakaway yesterday.
>>> Eneco Tour 2016: Latest news, reports and info
But speaking to Cycling Weekly before the start of stage four in Aalter in Belgium he was sanguine about the way his chances evaporated.
“You can lose sleep over but its not going to change anything. It was what it was. Bike riding, that’s the beauty of it, sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn’t.”
McNally said he “didn’t think he could have done anything differently”.
He said: “Elmiger attacked at 2km to go and then everything sort of stalled. No one really wanted to take it on. And I knew if I went too early I would have been fifth from there, so I waited until I could do a good sprint.
Watch: Show us your scars - Mark McNally
“Obviously when those guys [the peloton] are coming there’s no stopping them.”
McNally added: “For the way it panned out I think I took the most I could out of it.”
He said that him and his Wanty teammates would continue to race aggressively and get in breakaways and try to win stages over the coming days. He was part of an early escape on Thursday's stage four, but was caught mid-way through the stage.
