New Champ: Liam Corcoran takes the sprint for the National Junior Champion title. (Photo: Alan Bingham [email protected])
Liam Corcoran of Castlebar CC has taken the National Junior Road Race Championships in Co Louth today, Sunday, using his turn of speed to great effect after the end of over two and half hours racing in Blackrock near Dundalk.
With a number of Irish squad juniors having spent most of the past month in Europe preparing for the European Championships in Holland the week before last, it was perhaps anticipated that they would dominate today’s race, which was promoted by Cuchulainn Cycling Club.
Last year’s road race champion Ryan Mullen (Planet X) defended his Junior TT crown yesterday and having taken silver in the European TT Championships last weekend he went to the start line the overwhelming favourite today.
Advertisement
However, it was Thomas Fallon (Seven Springs CC) that took the bull by the horns today, attacking on the first of the six 17.5km laps.
On the second lap defending champion Mullen decided he was going to go for a long one and went after Fallon on his own.
He quickly caught him and the strong duo worked together over the following laps. However, while they got a gap of 1:30 very quickly, the elastic never snapped to the bunch. There were plenty of riders back in the peloton still willing to ride and as the second last lap was starting the slow chipping away of the leaders’ gap took on more urgency.
The margin quickly tumbled to 30 seconds, with the juncture to the two leaders finally being made just as the riders headed out onto the last lap on the flat circuit.
The neutralisation of that danger move injected confidence into many of the riders that they had a very good chance of medal, with a flurry of moves going clear and being caught until one three-man group managed to get a gap.
Corcoran missed that attack but managed to bridge with another rider with around 15km remaining, leaving five men out front.
They included Corcoran, Matthew Doyle (Foyle CC), Cian Dwyer (Dungarvan CC), David Fitzsimons (Murphy Surveys) and Craig Arrigan (Orwell CC).
They worked very well together until Arrigan lost his place coming towards the end. That left four men out front with three medals on offer.
In the charge to the line Corcoran got the better of Doyle for the win, with Dwyer in the bronze medal position and Fitzsimons in the very lonely championship spot of fourth place.
Corcoran told stickybottle he was delighted with his win. He suffered a broken elbow last season and at the beginning of this season he got pneumonia, which derailed the first part of his 2012 campaign.
He is a noted sprinter and before today’s win he showed he was coming into form in the Junior Tour by taking third on the Ballycastle stage.
“I was definitely going there today with a top six finish on my mind, that was more or less the aim I had for myself,” he said.
He believed while Mullen and Fallon are two very strong riders, their attack with 80km remaining was perhaps over ambitious.
“They are strong alright, but there was a lot of very strong riders back in the bunch and a good few lads were riding after them. So I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised we caught them. Then when the five of us got away on the last lap I wasn’t sure we were going to make it all the way, but when we got to 5km to go I was looking back and I could see they weren’t closing us down.”
In second place was Matthew Doyle who has just come home from a stint racing in Belgium where he won a junior kermesse in some style. In third was Cian Dwyer, a young Dungarvan man who Olympian Robert Power mentioned to us earlier in the year as an emerging young rider with plenty of promise.
Junior National Championships
1 Liam Corcoran, Castlebar CC - 2:35:40
2 Matthew Doyle, Foyle CC @ S/T
3 Cian Dwyer, Dungarvan CC @ S/T
4 David Fitzsimons, Murphy Surveys Kilcullen @ S/T
5 Craig Arrigan, Orwell CC @ 28 seconds
6 James King, Colomba Cycling Club @ 31 seconds
All Photos below Alan Bingham [email protected]
Related News
Topics
