DAVID McCANN'S form has not deteriorated following his narrow Ras defeat and he was out on his own at the end of the 95 miles West Down Grand Prix at Banbridge on Saturday. McCann followed up with another win yesterday in the Tour of the Mournes at Newry to keep himself to the fore in the quest for Olympic selection.
It was McCann's second successive victory in classic league events on Saturday but although Rags winner Tommy Evans was only fifth in his home town he still leads the competition with 33 points. McCann has moved into second place on 30 points with Paul Griffin next on 33 and then David Peelo on 32.
On the second of seven laps of a circuit of 13 miles McCann went ahead with Richie McCauley and Ciaran Power. On the fifth time around McCauley dropped back and at the start of lap seven McCann rode away from Power and built up a lead of almost two minutes.
Back in Banbridge the riders still had to go twice around a lap of a mile and a half and the chasing group split. McCann kept going well and at the finish was 57 seconds clear but McCauley still had enough left to out sprint Ian Chivers and Finn O'Sullivan for second place with Evans next.
Yesterday McCann had 10 seconds to spare over Evans at the end of the 75 miles at Newry with Barry Monaghan almost two minutes in arrears, third.
Scott Hamilton was fastest in the 10 miles time trial championship at Clonmel. He clocked 21 minutes and nine seconds to win by 52 seconds from John Blackwell with Karl Donnelly third.
. Russia's Pavel Tonkov celebrated victory in the 79th Tour of Italy yesterday after the 22nd and final stage ended in Sempione Park Milan.
Ukrainian Sergei Outchakov won the stage, over 176 kilometres from Sondrio which ended in a sprint finish among a five man breakaway.
Tonkov had the race sewn up after putting nearly three minutes between himself and world champion Abraham Olano in Saturday's stage in the Dolomite mountains.
Olano, and Tonkov's other major rival Evgueni Berzin, the Russian who won the Italian tour in 1994, had both conceded victory before yesterday's stage. The first real attack did not come until the peloton had reached Milan, when Denmark's Michael Claus Moller broke away in the city centre to arrive unchallenged for the first of seven high speed loops around the park.
He was soon chased down by a group of five - Outchakov, Russian Alexei Sivakov, Kazak Andrei Teteriouk and Italians Mario Scirea and Nicola Loda. With four laps to go, the main pack were nearly a minute adrift of the breakaways.
When the bell rang out for the final lap, the front five still had a lead of 40 seconds but it was down to 30 seconds in the final kilometre.
Tonkov had taken charge of the race on the 13th stage, and worn the leader's pink jersey every day since except one - when Olano took the lead by a record 46 hundredths of a second on Friday.
. Miguel Indurain confirmed his supremacy three weeks before the start of the Tour de France by winning the Criterium du Dauphine which finished in Grenoble yesterday.
The five times Tour de France winner reached the top of the Bastille hill that overlooks the city to complete the seventh stage in sixth place, 30 seconds behind stage winner Frenchman Luc Leblanc to ensure his overall victory. It is the 31 year old's second successive victory in the Dauphine.
