Dylan O'Brien has already taken the kind of results that put him right in the mix in a strong group of juniors competing with each other for national selection for some big races in the year ahead.
By Brian Canty
The 2014 racing season has barely kicked off and already the competition for places on Irish teams is hotting up, not more so than in the junior ranks.
Upwards of a dozen teenagers can make legitimate claims for places on the various selections, with the first scrap for green jerseys set to for the Tour of the North, where a five-man team will race over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
One rider who’s targeting big things this year is 17-year-old second year junior Dylan O’Brien (O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk). He finished third in the national road race championships last year, just one in a very long list of strong results last year.
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O’Brien subsequently spent a good portion of the summer training and racing in Belgium with an extended Irish junior and U23 development squad. He has recently returned from a week-long camp in Spain with the junior squad under the watchful eye of development coach Neill Delahaye.
“The camp was brilliant,” said the Charleville Two-Day stage winner.
“We went out on Monday, trained twice the Tuesday; two hours in the morning and the track in the evening. On the Wednesday we did four hours. On Thursday we did recovery in the morning and track in the evening. The next day was about 55 miles. Saturday was about four and a half hours then on the road and to be honest, it was just class, I loved it.”
Out in Spain with him was O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk teammate Eddie Dunbar and Mark Downey, Fintan Ryan, Michael O’Loughlin, Aaron Swan, (all NRPT-Standard Life), Declan Mulholland (Clann Eireann), Stephen Shanahan (Limerick CC), Josie Knight (O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk), Carla Padden (Castlebar CC), and Rachel Kaye Mellor (Orwell CC).
Cycling Ireland coaches Martin O’Loughlin and Orla Hendron also travelled.
“There’s a really good bunch of juniors there now, everyone was going great,” O’Brien said.
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“We’d have the craic on the flat but on the climbs it’d get a bit more serious, with guys testing each other out, you know the way it is,” he laughed.
Indeed, the likelihood is that Ireland will have three riders at the Europeans as well as the World Championships. But O’Brien believes it’s a fight for two places, believing Eddie Dunbar is “on another level”.
“I’d like to do Gorey at Easter but I think there’s an Irish team going to the Tour of the North so it’d be nice to get on that too.
“For me, the Junior Tour and the nationals will be big goals. I’d love to come back and do better at those and then of course the Worlds will be a huge thing for me.
“But I know the competition for those places will be savage, so it’s just a matter of keeping my head down and treating every race with respect. I can’t be thinking too far down the line.”
Last weekend he rode a very aggressive race in Broadford, but with team mate Dunbar up the road on a solo break he was a little restricted.
“I got away with Páidi O’Brien but I got the knock with just over a lap to go so I was fairly pissed off, it was just a stupid little mistake.
“From the start, Dan (Curtin) told us to just do 1-2 attacks on the flat from the gun. We did that for a while and eventually Eddie got away and wasn’t seen again.
“After that I got into a chase group – Páidi was there, and Chris Duken and Denis Dunworth. But I could feel my legs go and on the climb. They got rid of me and it all went downhill from there.
“My parents were on the top of the hill and I was just shouting ‘food’ at them! I was fairly pissed off, I might have gotten third if I stayed there because I’d never have beaten Páidi in the sprint.
“But it was good to see that the winter training has paid off and that I can get up the road and stay there in an A1-A2 race.”
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