Eoghan McLaughlin sails across the finish line at the end of stage 3 of the Gorey to take a brilliant win; the 16-year-old transition year student’s first cycling victory (Photo: Sean Rowe)
Having taken the month of January off the bike when he went to Australia to visit family members, Eoghan McLaughlin showed no signs of missing that period of winter training at the end of the Gorey Three Day on Monday.
The 16-year-old Mayo transition year student took his destiny in his hands in the last couple of kilometres of the stage into Blessington and attacked hard.
With the Irish Junior Team on the front of the bunch riding for race leader Robert O’Leary, the Westport Covey Wheelers man got a gap and put his head down, drilling it for the chequered flag.
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And just a couple of minutes later, after a lung-bursting turn of speed, he sailed over the line with his two hands in the air a stage winner in ‘The Gorey’.
“With about 3k to go I was fifth wheel, on Dillon Corkery’s wheel and he told me if I stayed there I’d do well,” a delighted McLaughlin told stickybottle.
“It got very dodgy, everyone was swerving; coming around us and across us so I dropped back to the back of the peloton.
“There was a hard shoulder and everyone was in the road. So I broke up the hard shoulder on the gravel and just drove it home with about 2k to go.
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“I looked back and I saw the Irish team on the front and I just kept the head down and went for it.
“I got a gap of maybe 10 or 12 seconds and I held that for a bit and then by the line it was only five or six seconds because I started celebrating a bit early.”
A pupil at Rice College in Westport, McLaughlin is a first year junior and on the basis of his turn of speed yesterday – after a tough weekend’s racing - we will almost certainly be seeing more of him.
“I was an U16 last year. I put the name down; I got a few results but I just didn’t get much luck,” he said of his first year racing.
Having returned from Australia after January holidaying in the sun, McLaughlin was taken under the wing of Anthony Murray from Multisport in Westport and has clearly benefitted from his guidance.
“I didn’t expect too much out of the weekend so I was delighted. I didn’t think I’d do too well because all the Irish juniors were there.
“But I just took no heed of them and I said ‘I’ll try my best to beat them all’.
“And the start I was a bit nervous because they weren’t over at Gent, but it was a bonus now that they were in the race,” he said in reference to beating the Irish junior team which cancelled their trip to Belgium for Gent Wevelgem and rode in Gorey instead.
“I’ll keep the head down and keep training hard and do the Junior Tour and hopefully I can get big results in the Junior Tour.”
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