Former national road race champion Damien Shaw will not race this year and has called time on his career in the peloton.
Shaw, now aged 35 years, was a latecomer to cycling but
rode at Continental level for three years.
He competed in Europe for An Post-Chainreaction in 2016
and 2017 and then went on to race with the Holdworth team in the UK in 2018.
While he joined the Strata 3-VeloRevolution team for last
season he raced only intermittently and has now decided to call it a day.
Shaw told stickybottle he would find it hard to train and
race for fun rather than be as competitive as he could.
For that reason, and because he had recently started his own business, he said he would not have the time required to race and train to be competitive and so had decided to stop.
Advertisement
Asked what the highlight of his racing days were, he was
quick to respond: “It has to be the national championships; people still
mention that to me now.
“Beating Eddie (Dunbar) that day was great, he is a rider
who will go on to win a few national titles and maybe do a lot more.
“And Conor Dunne was on the podium as well that day and
he went on to win it a couple of years later.
Related News
“So you have all these names on the list (of nationals
winners) like Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche and then me. I’m sure people who
looked at that list might say ‘whose this lad, this a mistake’,” he joked.
Shaw added he was perhaps ready to step away from racing
when the An Post-Chainreaction team stopped at the end of 2017 but was enticed
by the Holdsworth project, though he did not
race as much with that team as he had hoped.
He added Strata 3-VeloRevolution “really went out of their way” to help him last year in a bid to facilitate him racing when he was perhaps in two minds.
While he was very grateful to the team for trying to suit
him to facilitate his racing, a combination of his racing ambition no longer
being as intense as it was and starting a new business meant his heart was not
fully on his cycling.
“Looking back on it all, if that national championships
win was all I ever got then it would have been worth it all,” he said of the
years he put into the sport.
He was still doing some cycling but he did not believe he
would race again. He said he was also running to keep fit and may try the
marathon.
As well as his nationals win, Shaw was also 3rd in the
race in 2013 and took 4th on a stage of Rás Tailteann the following year.
In 2015 he took 2nd twice and 3rd in stages of Rás
Tailteann before taking his nationals win later that season. He was 5th overall
in the Rás in 2016 and rode the Europeans on the national team that year.
In 2017 he claimed a stage and held the yellow jersey in Tour
du Loir et Cher (2.2) before finishing 7th overall and also finished 5th again
in the Rás and was 4th overall in the Irish race in 2018.
One of the low points of his career was being selected
for the World Road Championships in 2017 but having to step away from the team
due to injury.
Topics
