House holds on to win tightest race in history

CYCLING: Right down to the wire. Kristian House yesterday came out on top of what had been an aggressive and suspense-filled FBD Insurance Rás, winning the tightest battle in the race's history. He and Danny Pate (USA TIAA-CREF) completed the 1,232km-event in exactly the same time, but the Britain Recycling.co.uk competitor got the verdict by virtue of his better stage placings.

Morten Hegreberg (Norway Sparebanken Vest) won the final, 155km stage to Skerries and took third place overall, 12 seconds back, while David O'Loughlin (Grant Thornton Ireland) and Tommy Evans (Dublin IRC Usher Insulations) also finished in the leading group of 19 riders and were best Irishmen in fourth and fifth.

They had started the day just 21 and 38 seconds back respectively, but although they launched numerous attacks on House, they were unable to open a lasting advantage.

Simon Kelly (Murphy and Gunn/Newlyn Group) finished second to Hegreberg at the crowd-thronged finish and placed a fine sixth overall.

Ciarán Power had an encouraging return to international competition after an operation earlier this year, winning two stages in the race, placing second to Bartlomiej Matysiak (Poland Legia Bazylisek) on Saturday and yesterday cementing his hold on the polka-dot jersey.

Following his move into the yellow jersey on Friday evening, House had to defend his lead for two days. A collective effort by his Recycling.co.uk team and the Poland Legia Bazylisek squad saw breakaways on Saturday and Sunday reeled in, including a long-range effort by Ryan Connor (Ireland Grant Thornton) and Ray Clarke (Éireann Dan Morrissey) yesterday. With House and Pate finishing in the same group, the latter needed to cross the line 10 places ahead of House to make up the difference which separated them on stage placings, but instead he was four places back.

"I am very happy to win this race, it ranks up there along with the stage win in the Tour of Brittany as my best career results to date," House said after the podium presentation. "I was pretty nervous today as things were so tight on time, but I had a very strong team behind me and my team-mate Chris Newton (last year's winner) rode really well to help me out."

Race organiser Dermot Dignam took a chance by designing one of the flattest courses in years, but ended up with an utterly fascinating edition of the Rás. "It was a great contest and went right down to the wire," he said.