The Cycling Ireland National Road Series will go ahead this year in a changed format, with the senior and junior men both riding the same races. The move means the standalone junior men's series races have been scrapped.
The national governing body said when there were standalone junior men's races last year, national coaches observed the top riders watching each other during the events, which meant the racing was much less aggressive.
The junior bunches were also small; a factor which can often lead to very tactical, stop-start, racing rather than a harder test that results in the strongest riders rising to the top.
As junior gears have been scrapped in Ireland for 2023, in line with a UCI recommendation, it has now been decided the junior and senior men will ride the same races in the Cycling Ireland National Road Series. There will still be points in each round for the top 20 seniors and also the top 20 juniors.
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Both categories will have their own general classification and the leaders of each series will wear a leader's jersey in the races. That effectively means there will still be a separate junior series, but it will be run off within junior and senior mixed races.
This year, under a raft of changes around category upgrading and racing, Cycling Ireland has made it much easier for juniors to move up to A2. However, as part of those changes, juniors are restricted to riding races up to 140km. It is not impossible for some juniors to compete in races longer than 140km, but they need to get special permission to do so.
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It is unclear - though we will seek clarity - whether than 140km distance cap for juniors means each round in the Cycling Ireland National Road Series now cannot be longer than 140km because juniors will be riding.
The format of the new mixed junior and senior men's series means it will run on the same basis the women's series has in recent years, when the juniors have always raced within the senior events.
Cycling Ireland said in a statement the clubs organising each round of the series will now not be under so much pressure as they will only be required to run two races; one for men and one for women. It said the scrapping of restricted gears for juniors was a factor in deciding to merge the junior and senior men's races this year.
"It was also felt that having the junior men as a separate race in 2022 had resulted in quite small bunches and had not produced aggressive racing," Cycling Ireland said in a statement. "National coaches had observed that riders tended to watch each other throughout the race.
"This combination of senior and junior men will allow for more positive racing - as was observed in the women’s national series with the categories combined into a single event."
The first round of the 2023 National Road Series is in Blarney, Co Cork, on March 26th. Any promoter with concerns about the suitability of the distance of their race for juniors competing with senior is asked to contact Cycling Ireland technical consultant Paul Watson at [email protected]
