Megan Armitage was forced to withdraw from the Women's Road Race in Flanders, Belgium, after being involved in a crash.
The sole Irish representative in the women’s event at the Road World Championships began strongly, and tried to get into an early breakaway but any early attacks were quickly nullified by the bunch.
Armitage maintained her position in the bunch but withdrew from the race with 56km to go after losing too much time when she went down.
The 158km race which started in Antwerp and finished in Leuven was won by Italian rider Elisa Balsamo in a sprint for the line finishing ahead of Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Katarzyna Niewiadoma of Poland.
In the junior women’s event, Aoife O’Brien and Erin Grace Creighton flew the Irish flag. The women faced five laps of the punchy Leuven circuit, totalling 75.2km in total.
Team Ireland battled hard to stick the searing pace with O’Brien managing to hold on until the end where she finished within a group placing 81st at 11:51. Creighton was among the non-finishers.
Zoe Backstedt from Great Britain and USA rider, Kaia Schmid, broke away from the bunch with about 30 kilometres to go and maintained their lead until the finish.
Double stage winner at this year’s Rás na mBan and winner of the points classification, Kaia Schmid was pipped at the line by Backstedt in the sprint for the rainbow jersey.
The World Championships will draw to a close tomorrow with the men’s road race, where Eddie Dunbar, Rory Townsend and Ryan Mullen will represent Ireland. The action gets underway at 9:25am.
