David McCann in yellow on the way to winning the then FBD Rás, he may make a surprise return this year
Three time Olympian and one of Irish cycling’s most consistent performers at international level, David McCann may return to the An Post Rás in a fortnight. The former race winner has retired from top flight competition and is now working as a director sportif with the new UCI Continental ranked team Synergy Baku.
However, one of its riders listed as a starter for the Rás in two weeks has suffered a bad crash and if he does not recover in time, McCann will start the Irish eight-day.
His Azerbaijani team has been confirmed today as riding the Rás, with Connor McConvey set to line out for the squad for the Irish event.
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McConvey was fourth in 2010 and seventh overall last year when he was riding for the An Post-Sean Kelly team. This season he has already been going well, taking second on a stage of the Tour of Thailand and finishing fifth overall.
He has also been going well at the Tour of Azerbaijan this week and should be one of the very strongest Irish riders in this year’s Rás.
Also in the line-up is the Namibian Dan Craven, who won the opening stage and led the race for three days in 2010. Always a popular visitor to Ireland, Craven was leading the climbers’ classification last year when crashed and was forced out.
The team will also bring to Ireland its German sprinter Christoph Schweizer, who this week won the opening stage at the Tour of Azerbaijan. David Clarke, a climb and GC rider will also travel to Ireland. The Russian all rounder Kirill Pozdnyakov is named in the team but it was he who crashed last weekend, so it will likely become clearer in the next few days if he will be fit to travel.
David McQuaid is involved with the team as technical director and he believes the squad can do very well in the Rás. He said after this week’s Tour of Azerbaijan the team would ride Flèche du Sud and the Lincoln GP as part of its build-up to the race.
“We are coming with a full team of GC contenders,” said McQuaid.
“Any of them could have yellow in Skerries. They are good enough and majority of the team has experience in the Rás.”
Also confirmed for this year’s race is the Indonesian-based UCI Continental team Polygon Sweet Nice. It counts a number of Irish riders among its ranks including Ryan Sherlock, Mark Dowling, Daniel Clifford, Stephen Halpin and Charles Prendergast.
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The team is currently riding the Tour of Azerbaijan and it looks like all five Irish members will ride the Rás.
“Already this season, parts of the team have raced in the Tour de Taiwan and Tour of the Philippines,” said Sherlock.
He confirmed that he will be the protected general classification rider in the 2.2-ranked event.
“All riders will be focused on stage results with Daniel Clifford as our main sprinter,” he added.
The American Astellas Oncology squad is the third to be announced today and will be led by two strong riders, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic winner Jake Rytlewski and Coulton Hartrich, who was fourth overall last year in the Nature Valley Grand Prix.
Irish national hill climb championship runner-up Anthony Walsh is also on the team, as are Ryan Aitcheson, a past fourth-place finisher in the Canadian road race championships, and Matt Green, who was fourth in the Wevigem road race.
“The team goal for the race is a top 10 overall for either CoultonHartrich or Jake Rytlewski and to make an impact on stages with aggressive racing,” said the manager Andrew Frey.
An Post Rás race director Tony Campbell anticipates a huge battle this month.
“There’s a very good standard of teams for this year’s race and the An Post Rás will be hugely competitive as a result,” he said.
“It is very hard to predict a winner, and this will add to the importance of tactics and playing things just right over the course of what will be a very tough week.”
The race will feature 33 categorised climbs, of which four are gruelling category one mountains and twelve are category two ascents.
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