Philip Lavery was due to ride with the new Smartlamp - Aviation Display team this year and will continue to work with the company, run by Noel Thompson (above, left), despite having signed for the Synergy Baku continental squad yesterday.
By Gerard Cromwell
While most new teams herald their young, up-and-coming riders at their pre-season launches every year, there aren’t many newly launched squads that can boast a 73-year-old former international as one of their star turns for the 2014 campaign.
But the newly launched Smartlamp - Aviation Display squad, based in Donabate, Co Dublin, aren’t your average new squad.
While they have ambitions of putting a top notch first category domestic squad together for 2015, this year a group of friends and training partners is coming together to race as veterans.
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“For the first year we’re going to concentrate on veteran’s racing,” says Smartlamp team boss Noel Thompson.
“The reason we set it up was because there were a lot of us older guys who trained together so we decided to put something together so that we could race together. I’ve set up a new company, called Smartlamp, recently, and we wanted to have something to promote it here.
"It’s an energy saving product and we thought sponsoring a cycling team would work quite well. While one aspect of it is to promote the product, the other is to get a group of likeminded guys, with the same love of the sport, together to train and race.
"I did look at the local Balbriggan and Swords clubs with regard to doing something with them, but the clubs are just too big so we decided to do something on a smaller scale and hopefully build on it for 2015, with a category one team going forward.”
Focussed on supplying local councils, car parks, garages, shopping centres and other businesses with energy saving outdoor lighting, Smartlamp Ireland also has distribution rights for the Middle East and parts of Asia and Thompson says that clients such as Dublin Airport and Sportslink have already seen a reduction in energy costs by up to 51per cent.
“We have a Polish parent company and maybe we can do something with our connections in Poland, bringing riders over to race here and vice versa. I don’t think we’re ever going to be a massive club with a heap of riders but we’ll keep it at a nice level where we’ll be able to manage it and hopefully get younger riders on board from next year."
One such rider is Dubliner Philip Lavery, who works for the new company and registered with the team earlier in the year. Having ridden as a stagiare with Cofidis last year but failing to earn a contract with the squad due to them not stepping up to the WorldTour this year, Lavery sold his bikes this winter, bought a car and began working with Smartlamp. However, in the past week he has signed for the Continental ranked team Synergy Baku.
"Initially I wanted to build a team around him for the Rás because I think that's a race he has the potential to win one day," said Thompson.
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"But that’s not going to happen this year. Philip will continue to work with us while riding with Baku this season but the more I look at it, the more I’d like to develop that, with a view to putting together a first category team that can eventually win all the major races here and maybe put a team together for the Rás in 2015.”
Lavery’s absence from the Smartlamp cycling team means that the biggest name on the squad is that of 73-year-old Sean Lally, the legendary Dubliner who is still defeating riders half his age in local races.
“I came back to cycling in 2011 after being 25 years off the bike and Sean Lally was still going strong,” laughs 51-year-old Thompson, who has already collected his first prize of the season as an A2 this year.
“His son, Sean Og, is out training now and he’s my age. Sean was still winning senior races here at that age. I think he won his last senior race when he was 53 years old.
"I’m delighted he’s decided to ride with us. He’s a breath of fresh air around the place. He loves wearing the new team kit and he works out the training spins every weekend. We do things old school really, but Sean still heads off to the sun for a couple of weeks training every year and he’s still going exceptionally well.”
The Smartlamp set-up is completed by Mick Scully, Barry Swan, Greg Burke, Richie Dufficy, Stephen Reilly and Andy Graham, some of whom have only taken up the sport recently.
“I think the last statistic I heard from Cycling Ireland was that the average licence holder was aged 38,” says Thompson.
“I raced A3 last year and while there are a lot of strong riders there, without a doubt, a lot of them don’t know how to handle their bike and I found it quite dangerous. I’m going to ride as an A2 this year but we will all ride the IVCA races and four of us will also ride the open races.
"We have a couple of lads in the office that don’t race at the moment but we got them Cycling Ireland licences anyway and hopefully they will in the future. As I said, the whole philosophy behind the team is about getting lads together of a similar age, lads that still enjoy riding their bikes, and having a bit of a team going so that we can train and race together and continue enjoying the sport.We will look at maybe putting together a junior team or senior elite team next year but for now, it’s just us oul’ lads.”
How he would have looked; Lavery in the new team kit before being offered a place for the season with Synergy Baku.
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