Matt Brammeier goes into Sunday's men's National Road Race Championships as the title holder but is relaxed in his approach to defending his crown.
He’s the three-time national champion and if he wins this Sunday in Carlingford, Matt Brammeier will be the first ever Irish rider to have won four road race titles.
He’s won three in-a-row and in the process he’s beaten the best this country has to offer in the shape of Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche. But Brammeier is not resting on his laurels and the Champion System man cannot wait to get cracking this weekend.
“Oh of course, I look forward to it every year,” he told stickybottle.
“It’s always a tough one, the nationals, especially being the defending champion; everyone is watching me and I know it’s going to be the same this year, as it is every year.”
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“But it’s just another race for me, I’ll go and do my best and keep it simple. I’ve won it three times already so the pressure isn’t really on me to win again. I’ll give it a lash as always and see what happens.”
Simple indeed, but with 120 others vying for the title on a course that isn’t exactly hilly, Brammeier knows he’ll need to be at his best, or somewhere near it, to make it number four.
“I think it’s an open race, especially on this course,” he says.
“There are a lot of guys who can be a threat; a lot of guys can win. So I just have to go into it like I don’t know anybody.”
But that doesn’t mean he won’t be the man all eyes will be on, particularly in the absences of Dan Martin, Nicolas Roche and Martyn Irvine.
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“I think I kind of am the man watched every year. Even the first time I won it, it’s always been the same, nothing has changed really. And I kind of have the same approach as every year. I don’t look at anyone in particular, I just look at everyone.”
Brammeier admits he prefers the one-day races to the stage races, because they are more “exciting” and his affection for the Belgian classics is well documented.
This year, he was aggressive throughout and though bad weather forced the cancellation of some of the races he was most geared for, he performed very well in the ones he rode.
Following the semi-classics season he took some time off racing to recharge and spent a good period in California in advance of the week-long Tour of California.
And since then he’s had another good spell of racing in Belgium.
“I’ve just been training good and had a bit of a rest and just built back up since California. I’ve just started to learn over the years that I go better after I’ve had a bit of a break after racing to train.”
After Sunday he’ll race in China at the Qinghai Lake stage-race, followed by a couple of races in Norway, possibly the Tour of Britain and if selected, the Worlds in Florence.
The latter, he admitted, isn’t exactly giving him sleepless nights, given how he was overlooked for selection for the Olympics last year.
“Yeah people are surprised and last year when I found I wasn’t there with the Olympics and stuff... yeah, you know how I feel about it and I haven’t much more to say about it,” he says.
“I just race my bike and do as well as I can. And at the end of the day, the only reason I’ll be going is to help Dan, if I do go. If they don’t pick me, they don’t pick me, it’s...it’s out of my control and there’s not much I can do about it. I just race my bike and let my legs do the talking.”
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