Well done to all 8 members of the Slaney team after some great performances over the weekend. Alex Williams took 4th place on stage 3 and 10th overall, Murt Doyle was 8th on stage 1, Alan Galavan took an unplaced S3 prize and the team finished 5th overall. More importantly the team were active throughout the race, involved in the decisive breaks and eager to ride aggressively.
The final stage was active from the start with attacks in the first kilometer causing several riders to be dropped by Crannford. In heavy rain and tailwinds the pace was high as was the risk of crashing. The first fallers were on a sharp band entering Shillelegh while a major chute just after Baltinglass saw at least 20 riders fall but luckily no Slaney involved. Unfortunatley we weren’t as lucky entering Blessington where Tomasz took a nasty tumble suffering deep cuts and grazes. With his broken bike in the team car Tomasz completed the final 5kms in the ambulance.
Despite a fast average speed of nearly 28mph for the day the stage was won by super junior Tim Kennaugh riding away from the bunch to be joined by his team mate and the pair rode to the finish 1 min45 up. Kennaugh is a fantastic prospect and seems a nice friendly guy. If we don’t see him in London 2012 or the pro ranks I’ll be very suprised. Several SCC riders were involved in a break that gained about 30secs on the bunch but the IOM riders were never going to be caught.
Final GC: 10th Alex Williams @ 2.25; 22nd Frank Dunne @ 2.54; 23rd Alan Galavan @ 2.56; 29th Murt Doyle @ 3.00; 77th Frank O’Leary @ 5.42; Dan Szczech @ 6.27; 102 Pat Dobbs @ 14.25. Slaney Team 5th overall.
Full GC and pictures on www.irishcycling.com
This is our 5th year putting a team in the Gorey and it was amazing at the prize giving to see how many prizes were going to teams from the South East. Wexford Wheelers had a fantastic race while South East Road Club, Slipstream and Barrow Wheelers also performed well. If we include our friends in Comeragh 14 of the top 30 riders on overall GC are from the South East. This is the strongest group of riders we’ve ever had in the region so lets look forward to rest of the season and support our local riders challenging and having the confidence to start winning open races.