Connor McConvey (leading) in the Archer GP this season. He was runner up in the Rás in May and though a fractured pelvis has derailed his season since then, he is back racing and looking forward to an extended campaign lasting until November.
By Brian Canty
Connor McConvey’s season gets back up and running tomorrow, Sunday, when he forms part of a six-man Synergy Baku Cycling project team for the UCI 1.1 RideLondon Classic race in the English capital.
It has been a very difficult six-week spell for the Belfast man. He has spent the period recovering from a fractured pelvis sustained in a crash in the Tour of Austria in mid June. But that’s all behind him now as he looks forward to the rest of what he hopes will be a long season.
Advertisement
“I’m feeling grand, I’ve been back training a good few weeks," he said.
"It’s been a bit of a long process; not for it to heal so much but just all the restricted movement and that."
“I didn’t think anything was broken initially when I crashed but when the adrenaline disappeared I could hardly stand up. So I got home and worked with a few boys in the Olympic Council and got it sorted real quick."
"I was lucky because where I broke it, initially they said it was where all the major muscles are attached to the pelvis and if you move it at all, which is really easy to do, you’re going to need a bone graft, so I couldn’t really do anything."
Related News
“Then I went to see a specialist and he said I was lucky, because if it was a centimetre further down it would have been the attachment of everything so he said I just needed to let it heal."
"It was grand, but the problem with all that is, you see with (Heinrich) Haussler and Frank Schleck when he broke his hip last year, it wasn’t the recovery of the pelvis that was the issue starting back, you start back training and you’re grand but then two weeks later you get tendinitis and everything is all tight."
"So for me, everything was all tight and twisted from my shoulders to my knees so it took a while to get that sorted.”
One of McConvey’s biggest regrets was missing the National Championships and the Tour of the Quinhai Lake in June. He said had he done “something special” at either, it might have catapulted him into the frame for selection for the Irish team at next month’s World Road Race Championships in Florence.
“I was lucky in one sense because I was due to take a break after the Nationals anyway, so it wasn’t so bad. The biggest pain was missing the Nationals and Tour of Quinghai Lake. But the team were really good, (David) McQuaid was telling me not to rush it and come back when I’m ready because we’re going to be racing until November anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to hold my May form that long anyway.”
After London , McConvey rides the eight-day ‘Baltic Chain Race’ (2.2) in Finland, Estonia and Latvia, then there are two one-days in the Czech Republic, and three one days in Austria (two 1.2s and one 1.1). Following that is the Tour of China which is 14 days long and finally, the Tour of Hainan.
On his chances of being selected for Florence after all of that, he says: “With three riders, it’s very unlikely. If I had done something special in the Nationals or at Quinghai it might have been possible but, it would be very unlikely with Deignan. It’s one of those things in the back of my head but I’m not putting a lot of focus on it.”
