Close but no cigar; Kieran Crean was within 300 metres of outright victory in the Corkman Three Day at the weekend but was nobbled by cramp and a very strong finish by Barry Meade (Photo: Brendan Slattery)
By Brian Canty
Kieran Crean has said he was “gutted” to lose the yellow jersey in the final metres of the Corkman Three Day A2-A3 race in Kanturk over the weekend.
The tough Blarney man took hold of the jersey following the time trial on Sunday morning and held it in the afternoon’s third stage around Banteer.
On Monday, he and his teammates rode a near textbook race in defending the jersey. But as the road rose towards the finish line, third-placed Barry Meade only needed a handful of seconds to relieve him of the jersey and succeeded. Crean dropped to fourth as he lost 21 seconds in 300 painful metres.
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“I’m gutted alright but that’s sport,” he said.
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“I thought I had enough done but coming up the hill my legs completely cramped, both legs. I was in agony finishing it off. I was lucky that I was so far up the bunch that people were coming around me; I didn’t get to the end of the bunch before I got to the finish line. So we all thought we had done enough to not be caught out but I was gutted in the hall afterwards to find I’d come fourth.”
“It was a shock but that’s the way it is and in fairness, there was a big gap there.
It’s still a career best result for Crean – who is an A3 rider. And he said he learnt a lot this weekend, like defending yellow.
“The final day I was nervous now alright. I was hoping a break would go away and that it being so tight I was hoping that the others would do the chasing, rather than it being up to me and my team to chase it back. So I was happy to see Eddie Dunbar (Munster) up the road. On the second lap then there were a few attacks going up the hill but we were able to match them. We pulled in the break then but I would have preferred if they’d been caught later in the lap.
“Coming in the last lap then, Stephen Murray (Dungarvan) put in some serious attacks and I was 130% trying to match them. I was trying to tell Murray to calm down because Meade was having a laugh off us. That’s exactly what happened...I was hoping, because Murray was on the same time as me, that he would ride too because he was going to lose as much as me if Meade went for it. "
"It didn’t work out and Meade, in fairness to him, he had a bad crash the day before and it was unbelievable for him to get up and go at it and the way he took that final chicane on Monday - after the crash he had, hats off to the man.”
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