Matthew Bostock produced an excellent ride to clinch a top-10 finish in the Cholet-Pays de la Loire one-day race in France on Sunday.

Riding for the Canyon dhb Sun God team, the 23-year-old Manxman was the leading British rider at the end of the 201.8-kilometre battle in western France.

Having finished 31st in the Grote prijs Jean-Pierre Monseré one-day race in Belgium earlier in the month, Bocky was able to get himself involved in the final sprint into Cholet and crossed the line in a brilliant seventh.

The race was won by Italian star Elia Viviani, the man who narrowly pipped Mark Cavendish to gold on the track at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

Cav was also in action at the weekend, successfully completing the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali five-day race in Italy.

The Manxman sprinted to a superb second place on the opening stage and helped his team to third in the team trial to take over the race lead.

Cavendish followed it up by placing 101st, 122nd and 119th over the next few days before completing the tour with a 70th-place finish on Saturday after helping his Deceuninck-Quick Step team mate Mikkel Honore to the stage victory.

As a result, Cav ended 86th in the general classification as well as seventh in the points class and 20th in the mountains category.

Competing in the same race, Isle of Man resident Ben Swift recorded results of 18th, fifth (team time trial), 51st, 12th 39th and 39th to end a fine 27th on GC, helping his INEOS Grenadiers team-mate Ethan Hayter to a stage victory as well as overall glory in the youth classification.

Manx teenager Amelia Sharpe also enjoyed a good ride on Sunday, competing against some of the world’s best cyclists in the prestigious Gent-Wevelgem Flanders Fields race in Belgium.

The 19-year-old crossed the line in a 38-strong second group of riders led by former winner Kirsten Wild (Ceratzit-WNT), some four minutes nine seconds down on race winner, multiple world champion Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma).

Amelia finished a very good 76th after tackling a tough 141.7km route that included seven climbs, plus cobbled sections and tricky gravel roads. The NXTG Racing prodigy is now scheduled to race alongside some familiar faces tomorrow (Wednesday) when she takes to the start line for the Dwars door Vlaanderen elite women’s one-day race in Belgium.

Also taking part are fellow Manx pro cyclists Lizzie Holden and Anna Christian riding for Bizkaia-Durango and Drops-Le Col s/b TEMPUR respectively. It will be the latter’s first UCI race since the Premondiale Giro Toscana Int. Femminile in Italy back in September 2019.