With a bad fixture clash on the domestic calender this weekend, Greg Swinand's loyalty to the Howard family for helping him out when he first came to Ireland from the US saw him choose Stamullen over Nenagh. He took the win to add it to victory in the Newbridge GP (above) earlier in the season (Photo: Sean Rowe)
By Gerard Cromwell
Having finished at the head of a UCD one-two-three at Newbridge earlier in the year, veteran Greg Swinand took his second victory of the season at the Stamullen Grand Prix on Sunday with an epic 22km solo effort.
While attacks and counter attacks saw groups come and go at the head of the race throughout, Swinand was a constant up front, apart from a brief spell where he missed a split in the front group on the penultimate climb of Snowtown, with around 35km remaining.
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As Australian-based Anthony Murray (Subaru) , Friday night’s Brendan Carroll Memorial winner Mark Dowling (DID Dunboyne), defending champion Paidi O’Brien (Osborne Meats-Edge Sports) and the Dave Kane-Northern CC duo of Adam Armstrong and Mark Kane rode off into the sunset, Swinand admits he was worried.
“I thought I’d lost it,” he says.
“The breaks were coming and going all day but, because I’m more of a diesel engine, I tried to stay ahead of it. But I missed that split and five guys dropped us on the hill.
"But the three guys I was with; Conor Murphy, Chris Reilly and Daniel Stewart, I knew we were as strong as the five up ahead. We just weren’t as explosive as them on the hill.”
An economist by profession, Swinand calculated his odds and rallied the troops for one more charge on the flat road between Naul and the turn for Balscadden.
“At the top, I counted 15 seconds and told the guys we could bring them back. We went into the tailwind on the main road and just drove it. Inch by inch, we were fighting our way back and we caught them after we made the left turn.”
With the group now swelled to nine up front, Swinand tried to mark danger man Armstrong before launching an early bid for glory on the M1 flyover, just before the start of the last 20km lap.
“I knew it was going to split again,” he says.
“Armstrong had a go again but we brought him back and I could see they were all looking at each other into the wind on the bridge. We came to practically a dead stop and I hit it there.”
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The current national veterans’ time trial champion then used his skills against the clock to simply ride away from the group and had opened half a minute by the top of the climb the final time.
“I knew to ride absolutely all out to the top of the hill and try to recover a bit going down. Once you get into a tailwind it’s very hard to close that gap.
"I always feel like a million bucks in a tailwind and I was flying through the back road and then really only had that two kilometres from the turn at Gormanston to survive and I knew it would be very hard to make up 30 seconds there.”
With the chase group fracturing behind him, Swinand soloed to victory in Stamullen at the ripe old age of 46 years.
And upon picking up the Joey Whyte Memorial Cup, told the assembled crowd why he had driven all the way back from the team time trial in Nenagh the night before to ride the race.
“When I first moved to Ireland, my best buddy in Boston, Tommy Mannion, gave me (race promoter) Gay Howard’s number and told me to contact him,” said New Jersey born Swinand.
“Tommy had practically lived in Gay’s house in the 80s and Gay was driving him to races and looking after him. When I first came over, Gay made sure I had a ride to races. He’d phone people and tell them to give me a lift to races. I didn’t even know what races were on back then.”
Swinand made that move to Ireland 15 yrs ago for an interview with Indecon Economic Consultants, a company he’s still with. And since then has become a household name on the Irish domestic scene, winning the Stamullen race for a second time on Sunday.
“Stamullen and Nenagh are both great races but if it had to come down to it, I had to come back for Stamullen. Gay and Kay (Howard) put their heart and soul into these races.
"I wanted to support them and Stamullen. It’s a really great race and it’s great to be able to win here for the second time.”
Although he is now taking racing ‘one year at a time’ and admits that he prefers a quiet night in watching movies with his wife and daughters to traveling around the country to races and sleeping in hotel beds, Swinand has not entirely ruled out the possibility of riding one last An Post Rás next month.
“I sort of half promised the guys I’d do the Ras if I rode really well in certain races,” he laughs. “But I’m not telling you which races.”
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