April 27, 2006 – Stage 2 of the Tour de Bretagne was a day for celebration for Andrey Mizourov who won both the stage and the leader’s jersey. Canada’s François Parisien had a less than celebratory day finding himself behind by 1:25 in the General Classification.

Stage 2 took place between Saint-Brieuc and Concarneau, a 160.2km road race. The decisive final break away took place about 15km from the finish line when Mizourov took off with a group of ten riders. He then proceeded to attack hard with 2km to go, and shook off everyone except Frenchman Cédric Hervé and Brit Russel Downing who were second and third respectively. Parisien, riding for the American team TIAA-CREF, found himself in 54th at 59 seconds behind Mizourov, the day before his 24th birthday.

“I wanted to be in the break, but we had a problem within the team. The guys who are used to track riding are having some difficulties adapting to road racing. Today the route was rolling and trackies generally do not like too many hills. As a result, two of us had to take the lead and pull on the hills, which meant that at the end of the race I was really tired. I couldn’t follow the final break away because I had used up almost all of my energy beforehand,” a disappointed Parisien remarked after the race.

He’ll have to review and adjust his goals for the rest of the race; his aspirations to have a top-ten finish are more or less impossible now. “I am definitely unhappy. I’m not a machine and I can’t just take off alone and make up a full minute and thirty seconds, so I won’t be in the top ten or fifteen as I had planned.”

Stage 3 of the eight-stage race takes place Thursday, April 27 starting in Concarneau and finishing in Hennebont 158km later.