By Shane Stokes
Ben Healy has spoken about his hard-won bronze medal in yesterday’s Irish road race championships, saying that he and fellow WorldTour professional Eddie Dunbar were closely marked by their rivals in the race, and that he lacked the necessary oomph to make the difference.
“It was a really grippy day,” he told stickybottle shortly after the finish of the 163 kilometre race in Kanturk. “It was only two of us chasing the breakaway behind and I think that just took its toll. The guys in front were pretty strong and we never quite caught them back.”
Healy won the championships in 2020 with an epic solo ride. He dominated the senior time trial title last Thursday evening, beating George Peden (Team PB Performance) and Dunbar (Ineos Grenadiers) by one minute 32 seconds.
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However despite going deep in that race, he said that it was unlikely that it had a negative effect on his performance on Sunday.
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” he said. “We are used to doing that sort of effort and recovering from it. I just didn’t have the legs to catch the break today.”
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Healy and Dunbar are two of Ireland’s four WorldTour riders. Sam Bennett and Ryan Mullen both missed the event, Mullen passing up the chance to defend both his road race and time trial titles, in order to be fresh for the Tour de France. Ultimately both riders were passed over for selection when the Bora-hansgrohe team was named on Monday.
Had they been in Kanturk they would have taken some of the attention that Healy and Dunbar had attracted, potentially giving them a little more freedom.
Did Healy feel that their WorldTour status led other riders to mark them, and increased pressure on them to do extra work?
“Definitely, and for sure for Eddie,” he answered. “It is his home race. We were marked out a little bit but that you have got to race like that and that is to be expected. We still tried to race hard and make the race in our favour because it is a hard enough course to do so.
“Eddie had the legs but just unfortunately in the final he was not feeling too great. We did the best we could today.”
Healy has had a very strong debut season with EF Education-EasyPost, riding aggressively and going close to victory on a stage of the Tour of Norway. His squad is trying to fend off relegation from the WorldTour and he said that the current race for points has added an element of uncertainty to his programme.
“I am not too sure yet what is next,” he said. “The point situation is pretty tight for the team, so it is kind of [a case of] playing it by ear. But I am sure I will have a busy second half to the season.”
