By Shane Stokes
Having no Irish riders in this year’s UCI World Road Championships was a controversial development. Cycling Ireland declared in recent weeks that it wouldn’t be sending a team due to budgetary constraints, meaning that for the first time since 1976 there were no Irish riders in the worlds.
Archie Ryan is one of those who people have said should have been sent to compete in Australia, with his strong performances in recent races underlining his glittering form.
However the Wicklow rider has said he was okay with missing the U23 road race, which took place last Friday. The reason? An alternative goal which is a major ambition for him.
“I was really considering it,” he told stickybottle, speaking about the worlds. “But the Ronde de l’Isard is a big target. He added even though the course in Wollongong was "a good course for me" it was "really a Classics guys course" and he felt the fight for medals was "going to be a sprint to the line".
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"Even though I won that sprint the other day (the uphill finish of stage 2 of the Tour of Slovakia), I do not have a good history in sprints to a line from a group. But the course at l’Isard is just perfect, so I am more than happy to go there.”
Won in 2004 by Philip Deignan, who went on to a big professional career, the Ronde de l’Isard looks tailor-made for Ryan’s talents.
Ronde de l’Isard begins tomorrow, Wednesday, with an undulating 157km stage to Saverdun and concludes the following Sunday. There’s a team time trial which should suit his Jumbo-Visma squad, two summit finishes plus a concluding mountain stage which features no less than four category one climbs.
For Ryan, the harder the better. This is even more so the case after his recent strong performances, results which he accepts may put him on his rivals’ radar.
“Slovakia and l’Avenir will have put me a bit more on the target list,” he says. “The problem is that wearing Jumbo-Visma kit means you are always a target. It doesn’t matter if you are a domestique or a leader. We have a running joke on the team where it is like, ‘we are not making the break today,’ because Jumbo is not allowed in the break. We just never make the break, it is just impossible.
“So it definitely will probably will have a bit more of a target on my back after that. Still, there is not much hiding on a course like l’Isard, so it should be fine.”
A RISING STAR
For Ryan, it’s been an effervescent few months. Sidelined for the best part of two years with knee problems, he bounced back to form this season and has ridden solidly all year for the Jumbo-Visma development team.
Most recently the 20-year-old finished second on a stage and a superb fourth overall in the Tour de l’Avenir, then won a stage plus the best young rider award in this month’s Tour of Slovakia. He was also sixth overall in the latter race.
Ryan competed in the latter event as a guest with the Jumbo-Visma WorldTour team, the giant-killing squad which this year defeated double Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar in helping Jonas Vingegaard to the Maillot Jaune.
Winning your first professional race while making your debut with a WorldTour team is a huge achievement, and Ryan has exited from the Tour of Slovakia full of motivation.
“It couldn’t really have gone much better. I am really, really happy,” he told Stickybottle. “It is good to get the hands in the air, it has been a long, long time. It was really, really nice, a really nice experience…good craic.”
Ryan went into the race uncertain how things would play out. Being a development rider meant that he might have been required to dedicate himself completely to the WorldTour competitors on the squad, but he hoped that he would be given some leeway.
“I was always going to try to do good GC, if I got the opportunity from the team. We had quite an open leadership, it is just whoever is there in the final,” he explained. “And then for the rest of the race we would support him or them, if there were more options again.
“So I had the chance to try to do something. Luckily I had the legs. I didn’t think I would be winning the sprint from the group of 20, not in my wildest dreams. But I managed to somehow do it.”
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The sprint Ryan refers to was an uphill finish of just over one kilometre on stage two. He marked the most aggressive riders on the earlier climb, doing clear with ten others and riding prominently, and then stayed to the fore when a similarly-sized group got back up to them.
He then made his wining move with approximately 200 metres to go, gapping the others and holding them off to the line.
Ryan’s performance saw him leap 34 places up to fifth overall. He was just ten seconds off the race lead then, but his chances of taking yellow were hampered by a lack of another summit finish over the remaining three days of the race.
“It was kind of annoying,” he said. “Because against the rest of the lads in the GC I would definitely be quite confident in an uphill finish. The next day was quite hilly, but it was all four percent climbs, it was all drafting climbs. It was really, really hard to get away from the big boys. So it just wasn’t ideal, unfortunately.
“Luckily we had another option in Koen Bouwman, who got loads of time in the sprints. So that put him onto the podium, which was really, really nice as well. So it was good to have another card there.”
What was notable from the TV coverage was how much Ryan’s teammates celebrated his success with him, and how much a part of the squad he looked. He’s been with the development team since 2020 but clearly fits in with the WorldTour squad too.
“It was great. Really, really nice. It is pretty much the same setup, we are very lucky in the devo team,” he said. “So I felt right at home, it wasn’t that everything was new.
“But it was brilliant, though, it was a great experience. It was also nice to race with some new faces as well, to meet a few of those boys, it was really nice. And I think it is really interesting just to keep things new. So that was super.”
NO EARLY MOVE TO JUMBO-VISMA’S WORLDTOUR SQUAD
A new one-year contract between Ryan and the Jumbo-Visma development team was announced in recent weeks. But considering his performances in Slovakia and elsewhere, plus his evident integration with the squad, many will wonder if he might step up to the WorldTour sooner rather than later.
However Ryan rules that out due to the limitations on squad size. But, due to the UCI rule enabling guest slots for development riders with their WorldTour counterparts, he believes he will get good opportunities in big races in 2023 anyway.
“I know the WorldTour team is full and they are not signing anyone else. So I wouldn’t be doing that, no,” he says.
“But I can basically have a WorldTour calendar without being on a WorldTour team. It is absolutely fine. There are lots of opportunities to do more mixed team races.”
There is however one constraint on which events can be targeted in this way.
“They don’t do that many races where we can guest, because you can’t guest in WorldTour races. It is only .1 events and .Pros. Jumbo only do so many of those because there are just so many other WorldTour races going on. So there is a limit anyway. It is just about taking every opportunity if there is one. I am looking forward to it anyway.”
All going to plan, he should be able to supplement such guest slots with a stagiaire role towards the end of next season.
The most important thing is that he has fully recovered from his injury, is racking up strong performances and has shown that he is one of the most promising young riders Ireland has had in many years.
Ryan is also on a confidence high, with his recent performances proving to him that he has what it takes and that the patience he showed while injured was worthwhile.
“It has been great. It has been good to back up a good couple of rides before, and just show my legs are still there after l’Avenir and Sazka Tour and whatnot. So it is good for the confidence, for sure.
“And it is really nice to get my hands in the air, to realise that I have the legs to do that and not just ride top five GCs…that is really, really nice.”
Roll on the Ronde de l’Isard, where he hopes to further underline his class.
