Mark Dowling in action in Stamullen at the weekend; he's had his first taste of foreign pro racing (Photo: www.blackumbrellaphotography.com)
By Brian Canty
Mark Dowling is back in Ireland recovering after his maiden race in the professional ranks, the 2.1 ranked Tour of Taiwan last month.
Though he has mixed feelings about his own performance looking back on the race, he said it was a valuable learning curve as he looks ahead to next month’s Tour of Azerbaijan (May 1-5).
The Polygon Sweet Nice rider had stayed on at the team’s base in Indonesia following the Taiwan event, but with the location not ideal for training and the Meath man picking up some sickness, he decided to come home to train.
“The training wasn’t good, it was so polluted and so busy that it wasn’t working for me; with the food and the travelling I was getting burnt out so I decided to pack up and head home. I was supposed to ride in the Philippines but I underestimated all the travel and the jetlag. I’d been to 15 airports in two weeks so when I got home I was burnt out. Then when I got home I was just recovering and I trained hard in three degrees of heat and picked up a bit of a chest infection,” he explained.
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Of the Tour of Taiwan, where he narrowly missed out on the top 10 overall, he said: “I was happy and disappointed. I was kind of on my own in terms of a team, coming into climbs and stuff. There was four ProConti teams and when they’re coming into a climb the bunch is just lined out so I was doing my own thing trying to ride up the outside and then settle in and when the real attacks started I was already in the red."
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“I knew I could get out there and maybe win a stage on a hilltop finish. But when the really top guys took off at the bottom of climbs I just didn’t have it because I’d been on my own trying to get up the front. I had to recover a bit and I’d eventually claw my way up to the front 10 guys but I couldn’t attack. All I could do was follow wheels."
“But I knew what I was getting in to and I didn’t fear it. You can see guys suffering just as much as you so you don’t get intimidated by guys, they’re just other guys. The pace is just too hot to be worrying about them. But at the same time, one mistake and you’re halfway back the bunch.”
On slipping out of the top 10, he ruefully says: “I was hanging onto my 10th place overall and staying up the front out of trouble. I was actually on the back of the MTN Quebeka team on stage three with 4k to go and I couldn’t see anything but suddenly the whole bunch turned right."
"We couldn’t fit into the corner and I’d say maybe 15 of us missed a traffic island and got stuck in oncoming traffic so I had to click out and slide over the bonnet of a car and start chasing for the last 4k, ended up losing 47 seconds. Every stage after that, I stayed with the leaders so I would have stayed there only for that. It’s a pity. It would have been a good start to the season finishing a 2.1 race in the top 10.”
Dowling is currently in the middle of a big block of training but was on familiar ground last weekend when he rode all three races in Stamullen.
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