Cycling Reports |
Newbridge Grand Prix and not too far beyond….. By Cian Lynch
16th March 2003
And what a great circuit it was. A credit to Jonathon Malone and co. Great facilities, well marshaled again and the weather to boot! A few weeks back I took a spin around the circuit (unbeknownst to me, the actual circuit) and felt fairly good. Milltown, sweeping left flat section, straight – right and left up a (cursed) drag, sort of two sections, then left up another drag (not as cursed, only because I was so b****d after the first set, and then left back in towards the finish area. By 5. All provinces represented. Well, a good portion of Munster anyways, following on from the later cancellation of the Bill Hyland Memorial race in Clonmel. This gave rise to Timmy Barry, The Grif (Paul Griffin), Kieron Mc Mahon and many others having to travel halfway around the globe for a Sunday race. We truly are blessed up here – races on our doorstep, and rarely having to really travel. I read somewhere, cyclingnews.com, when none other than T.C. wrote an article about what seemed like a UCI race taking place in Munster. He finished off his critique with a ramble about how the National Governing Body could possibly in the right frame of mind allow, possibly incredibly, allow another race take place on the same day, which could only serve to detract from the marvelous race, that the Mick Cahill Memorial race, run down in Munster. There is the very minor issue, which is the fact that for I do not know how long, the majority of riders in Leinster and beyond have raced the Coombes Connor Memorial race at this time of year. Welcome back from Langkawi Tommy. Let’s settle down and get real. Greetings done, the bould Grif in good form, and Kieron on his prize from the Rathcoffey G.P., which now serves as his training bike, we set off on the controlled approach to Milltown. Someone at this side of the road is waving a large French tricolour and that seems reason enough for the majority to start winding up to the race. Colm Farrell takes the race by the horns, and winds up the 53.11 to take leave of the field. This is a reasonably successful move, as within a short time, he has established a gap and is no more than a yellow and purple and green (his shorts) spec in the distance. The small ascent is not too much of a problem, and as Joe Fenlon takes off after Dave Peelo, yours truly hops across and starts the old up and over routine for the first time in this race. Not lasting too long, Laurence comes across with a couple of others, but the bunch has started to race, and we are, oh no!, we’re swinging that right and left up the bloody drag I had trained on with John O Gorman! Sit in, sit tight, and go up and down, in and out of gears, and you can easily imagine how the climb was. Big ring or small ring, what’s everyone else doing? Don’t get me wrong, its not that steep, just draggy. Nags head draggy – get the picture. Its all still together, I think, but then there’s a few dives off the front. The pace remains high enough and not much action until after the second lap, and the second time over the drags – Dave O’ Loughlin asks me if the group up ahead is the first group or the second group. The second group I tell him, as I can just make out the lead car and a few bodies behind it, ahead of them again. And that was that. Already Cian? What about the part about Eddie slagging you about your climbing ability? Or getting dropped on the climb? No. Didn’t even happen. Dave O’ Loughlin made up his mind. Didn’t even ask me if I was interested in swinging out of him on the way across (or some of the way) to the leaders. Oh no. Just off he went. (He ended up winning, didn’t he!). Laurence and myself did a few turns (quite a few turns) on that road over towards Milltown, but there was not enough of a consistent drive from ourselves to close the gap to the leaders. Laurence experienced some technical, bike technical that is, problems, and had to pull up for the car to sort it out. On the, lets say, first set of drags, the ‘oul body was feeling not so good. That uphill feeling. In fact, I had nothing in my legs. Dare I say, the Pepp must have been in a bag too, as I was going at just about the same speed up it. And then the Hand of God appeared. Well, the hand of Griff anyways. Obviously out on a training ride, Paul Griffen had made a conscious, or not so conscious decision, to ride around. When he saw the fine physique, that is my grand Stephen Roche shorts clad arse, heading south, he put out the hand (in fact told me, in dat Kerry accent, to sit in the saddle!) and gave me the slightest (just in case a commissaire is reading) push forward. Now maybe someone did notice this happening, because, as God is my witness, this happened again on another section along the route. Unbelievable. Now, maybe it was the fact that I was feeling stuffed, you know one of those days when you cannot get enough liquid into you and so on. We came around for what I thought was the end of the race, but the dulcet tones of the Daniel Mangeas of cycling, that is Gay Howard, announcing to most of Kildare that our group was only 25 seconds down on the second group, but that there was a group of 11 still up the road (notice no time gap, otherwise many more than myself would have sat up!) was enough for me. The team car pulled up, but I waved them on. Not my day. Good to be racing on a day when you don’t feel great, I think. Improves the soul….. Well I don’t know about that. All I do know is that I was spinning out to the St. Patricks Day race in Batterstown and thought, sod that. My legs were as heavy as anything. I just went for a spin instead. Which, apparently is just as well. The handicaps were a bit confused……. 4 minutes to the scratch group at the end? Has cycling changed dramatically in the last two years. Are we in for a great few years in Irish Cycling with such strong Juniors and Vets? Well, juniors anyway? Or are the handicaps a bit ……. Suspect? What else is happening? The Cycleways lads have their new Eddy Merckx, Shimano equipped bikes on show. And boy, are they pretty. The Bikes. The bikes are pretty. I’ll have a word with the boss and give you a bit of info on them next week. Watch out also, as Mark Scanlon is penned in for the Milan San Remo. He was to ride the Paris-Nice, but stayed up in the Belgium are after the success of Jan Kirsipuu in the 3 Day Tour of Western Flanders, and joined the team for the GP Erik Breukink, where he distinguished himself with a fine 18th place in the T.T. stage. Many might have heard of weight issue facing Mark at present, as mentioned on Eurosport during the week. Simply, Vincent Lavenu has requested Mark to detail his diet for 2 weeks, and on the back of that, Lavanu has taken out many of the heavy, or sweeter, foodstuffs from his diet, in an effort to fine tune him for the Classics season. Cian Lynch. Asst. D.S., North Kildare CC |
The
Greyhound Track. Appropriate for any other running of the race, but for the
circuit this year, well…. might as well have been a golf club half way up the
Nags Head….