A delighted Mark Downey gets his hands on the yellow jersey after last night's TT win in Ennis. He also leads the points and first-year junior classification.
Having taken the first stage of the Junior Tour of Ireland in Ennis, Co Clare, Mark Downey said he had gone into the race aiming for a stage win but never expected it to come so soon.
“No, I definitely didn’t expect to win tonight and take the yellow jersey,” a delighted Downey told stickybottle after his winning ride over the 11km course last night, Tuesday.
“Obviously I would love to defend the jersey, I’ll take it day by day and see what happens,” he said.
Downey added he was hopeful the advice he had received so far in his racing career from his original club Banbridge CC, his father and brother and current Nicolas Roche Performance Team manager Philip Finnegan would stand him in good stead.
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The son of 1984 Olympian Séamus Downey and a brother of An Post-Chainreaction rider and Irish international Sean Downey, the youngest of the Downey men said he wasn’t sure how his team would plan to defend the yellow jersey on the road over the next five stages.
Having won Rás Dhun na nGall already this season by attacking when his rivals were exposed and least expecting it, Downey has proven himself well capable to doing exactly what needs to be done to take a stage race win.
He heads into today’s stage, on his 17th birthday, in relaxed form having already achieved his goal of taking a stage win this week.
“It’s my first year as a junior so to be in this position is definitely exciting,” he said.
“I haven’t raced for two weeks and I had a GCSE exam last week and had eight exams since the end of May so I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
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“Even warming up tonight I didn’t feel like I had great legs, you know? Because I hadn’t raced for two weeks, I just needed a blow out tonight. I got a good warm up in, around 40 minutes or so.”
“It was a course similar to the Gorey (Three Day); it was draggy. There was no clear headwind or tailwind going out and back. I rode hard going out but keeping a little bit because I felt there was maybe a slight head wind on the way back in.”
“I had Dylan O’Brien ahead of me and when we got to the turn I was keeping an eye on where he was. I didn’t feel I’d gained that much on him on the way out. At the turn I just took it easy around the roundabout but I was probably panicking a little bit.”
“But then on the way back, on the straights I could see Dylan the odd time, so that probably gave me that little bit of encouragement, that bit of confidence to just keep driving it.”
Downey said the training he had done for the international track set up had perhaps helped his TT ride last evening.
However, with the other riders in the international set up having recently returned from some track training in Glasgow he felt he may have been at a disadvantage to them in last night’s time trial.
“I haven’t done a huge amount in terms of preparing for a TT; it’s been more climbing training for this. It’s been a goal of mine, this week, for a long time so we will see what happens.”
He goes into today’s stage with members of the Irish team Eddie Dunbar and Dylan Foley breathing down his neck.; Dunbar just 5 seconds back and Foley only eight seconds in arrears. And with just 30 seconds covering the top 12 and one minute covering the top 20, the time gaps are very small meaning the leader board can be completely turned on its by on decent breakaway.
