Olympian and former multiple national cyclocross champion Robin Seymour - in orange - leads them at the start of the Fixx Coffeehouse Supercross Cup in Dundrum on Sunday. He lost that outing to Ray O'Shaughnessy (to Seymour's left, in black). As well as O'Shaughnessy, Seymour also expects riders like Tim O'Regan (far left) and Zippy Doyle (far right), among others, to be in the hunt at an ultra competitive National Cyclocross Championships in Belfast on Sunday (Photo: Adrian van der Lee)
By Gerard Cromwell
Although beaten into second place by Dundalk’s Ray O’Shaughnessy in last week’s final round of the Fixx Coffee Supercross Cup in Ballawley Park, south Dublin, Robin Seymour remains a favourite for the first title race of the year, Sunday’s National Cyclocross Championships in Belfast.
Advertisement
Seymour spent most of the morning bundling equipment into his car before setting up and maintaining the Ballawley course prior to racing but he’s not using it as an excuse for being beaten on the day.
Nor does he succumb to the theory that he ‘took it easy’ last week in order to be fresh for the title race.
“That’s been said to me a couple of times,” admits Seymour.
“But I don’t understand that mentality. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Sunday went okay. I’m not going to make a heap of excuses. I just didn’t have a great day. I was a bit bunched on the start line and Ray was riding very well while I was struggling a little bit.
“I wasn’t able to make it count around the course on the slippery sections and wasn’t able to put him under too much pressure. He was very strong in the crosswind and I was starting to fade towards the end.
“I made a mistake on the last lap and fell, which put paid to my challenge but, even without that, I’d have struggled to get around him before the finish anyway.”
While Sunday was a rare defeat for Seymour, with O’Shaughnessy becoming the only person to beat him in a cyclocross race this season, the Team WORC-Expert Cycles rider remains the joint favourite going into Sunday’s race in Lady Dixon Park, with little expected to separate him from current national champion Roger Aiken.
With Banbridge man Aiken dominating in Ulster and Seymour bossing the southern scene, the duo has yet to face off against each other this season. But according to Seymour there is no dark, psychological battle going on.
“For me it’s just work that’s kept me from racing up north,” says the Wicklow man.
“We’ve done ten races down here now from the middle of September through to December and I work every Saturday, so my Sundays are the only free time I have.
“It’s very hard to pack up and travel to a race every single weekend. I’m coming off the back of a long mountain bike season, where I raced every weekend too, so something has to give.
“I imagine it’s the same for Roger. I know he missed the race I went up to in Lady Dixon Park because he had to work. If you’re travelling to race every weekend it’s hard on everything from relationships to work to everything else.”
Seymour’s trip to Belfast earlier in the season however, gave him a taste for Sunday’s national championships course and he likes it.
“I rode the course in October.” he says.
Related News
“Apparently, there’ll be a few small changes for the championships but it’s more or less the same. It’s a great course. John Bogues has done a great job up there. It’s tricky and it’s fast in places but it’s quite open with some lovely sections on it.
"There’s a great start-finish area and it’s a really great venue for it. I think it’s even better than the mountain bike race they hold there every year and that’s really good too. I’m looking forward to it.
“It’s not super technical or anything but then, cross courses tend not to be now. Even the ones that we run, we’re kind of gone away from that a bit. They’re a bit faster and more spectator-friendly.
“It’s probably quite green now but apparently there’s lots of practice going on up there at the moment. With a race in the morning, it’s really the period after the vets have been around it that you figure out what the conditions are like and the lines to pick.
“It depends on the course; if it’s very heavy going it could spread it out and become a war of attrition. Hopefully the championship race will stay together and actually get into a race and doesn’t just split up on the first lap with mechanicals or whatever.”
(Piece continues below advertisement)
Apart from Aiken, Olympian and road and MTB international Seymour can rattle off a handful of names on both sides of the border that he will have to contend with on Sunday.
“I think there will be a couple of guys who will be close. In previous championships, because it’s been a head to head, we tended to look at each other a little bit and it’s become tactical which allows other people back into the race.
“Obviously Ray is in good form. I think Dave Montgomery, if he’s riding it, will be there or thereabouts and Matt Adair will certainly be there in the early part of the race. He certainly has the pace to go with the speed at the start.
“You also have Glenn Kinning, Ronan McLaughlin and Connor McConvey all riding well up there and we have Timmy O’Regan, Sean O’Tuathail, Evan Ryan, Anthony Doyle and five or six guys down here too.
“It will be a real mash up for... I don’t like to say for third place... but assuming the form goes to plan and Roger and myself are in front like we were last year, it will be tough for third place for sure. I wouldn’t like to be going for the bronze medal.”
While the two top seeds, Seymour and Aiken, will start at the front of the grid, for the rest there will a huge battle to get to the front on the early laps.
“It’s going to be very tough for the guys behind on the grid because there’s a group of about 10 riders who will be fighting really hard to get well placed, to get up into third or fourth place.
“That’s the ideal position because you’re staying with it but not doing anything on the front. I’ll have to be really careful. You could have a situation where there are so many people trying to get up near the front that you could be very badly blocked on parts of the course and if you make a mistake the race could be over for you fairly quickly.
“But that’s great. You’d far rather that than have only one guy to compete against and it’s great that there are so many guys all at the same level and riding well. To make it into the top 10 is really tough now, which is fabulous.”
Topics
