Eoin McCarthy of the Irish national team rides at the head of the bunch during this year's U23 Tour of Flanders in Belgium. The programme of races that Cycling Ireland has selected in the hope of qualifying points for the major events later in the year hasn't found favour with David McQuaid (Photo with thanks to Joe Duffy)
By Brian Canty
David McQuaid believes Cycling Ireland has “stepped away” from a road programme to concentrate on the track and though there has been success on the boards, road racing has suffered at the same time.
The general manager of the Synergy Baku Cycling Project believes it is a “failure” that we don’t have a national team in the An Post Rás and that more thought must go into choosing what races the U23 Irish team do.
Advertisement
“Our national federation has stepped away from the road program and they’ve gone straight to concentrate on the track,” said McQuaid.
“They’ve had a lot of success but Cycling Ireland is about more than one discipline.
“As a federation we seem to be missing out because they’ve gone down the Nations Cup route and these are extremely, extremely hard races,” he added in reference to the three races the Irish teams have done around Easter in recent years, those being the Tour of Flanders, ZLM Tour and the Le Cote de Picardie.
“These races are not easy; the cream of the crop starts these races. There are easier races our guys can go to, but it’s not up to the riders.
Related News
“If you look at the UCI one-day races in the UK like the Rutland, they’d love an Irish team and have welcomed club teams like UCD in the past.
“There are UCI points at stake there and it’s not to be scoffed at after you saw what happened our U23s this year miss out (on qualifying a full quota of riders for the Worlds) just by a few points.”
McQuaid has managed Irish teams in the UK in the past and with some success.
He oversaw Ciarán Power win the East Midlands International Classic while he was also manager when Martyn Irvine took a top five result in the same race in 2009.
“Okay, while those two were of a certain class where they were very successful on the domestic scene they could still win across the water," he said.
"And that is a further reason why it wouldn’t be a wasted exercise or budget to start adopting that strategy again.
“In terms of the Rás; it's a failure that we don’t have a team in it because not every Irish rider is registered with An Post or another Continental team that they can get a chance to score points.
“They’re relying on the national championships and that’s a risky gamble.”
Topics
