The UK-based Trinity Racing team is set to ride Rás Tailteann next month, which is good news for its two Irish riders, Matthew Devins and Kevin McCambride.
Devins (19) is now in his second season with Trinity Racing and last weekend put in a very strong climbing performance on the hardest stage of Flèche du Sud in Luxembourg while riding for the Irish team.
National U23 TT champion McCambridge (20), in his first season with Continental team Trinity, won the North Down GP last Sunday. That was his first victory since coming back to race action after a serious crash earlier in the season.
Confirmation that 'Trinity; will ride Rás Tailteann comes as more new sponsors for the race have been secured. Last week the event organisers, Cáirde Rás Tailteann, confirmed FBD Insurance was returning to sponsor the stage-winner jersey and announcements on further backers are imminent.
Advertisement
The race has been scaled back a little this year, to five stages, and does not have UCI status. Rás Tailteann was missing from the roads of Ireland in 2019 due to lack of sponsorship – and again in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic - but is now back for an eagerly-awaited 2022 edition.
Related News
This year the field will be based on domestic clubs and teams, bolstered by elite teams from Great Britain and Continental Europe as well as an Irish national team. A decision was taken not to feature Continental teams, though exceptions are being made to allow Irish team EvoPro Racing and Trinity Racing, with its Irish riders, to enter.
Andrew McQuaid, the Irishman who owns Trinity Racing, said he was delighted his charges would be competing in Ireland, in a race he rode himself. “It is great to see this historic event returning this year and we are very excited to have a team travel home to Ireland in the Trinity Racing colours to participate,” he said.
Race director, Gerard Campbell, believed Trinity Racing would prove a great addition to the race, in what will be its first Rás. “This team has proven itself as one of the most successful incubators of talent in cycling across multiple disciplines, so we can be sure it will be one of the teams to watch in the 2022 edition,” he said.
As well as Ireland’s Devins and McCambridge in the Trinity Racing Rás team, its line-up will feature three world class off-road riders, who also complete on the road; Alex Malacarne, Adrien Boichis and Cameron Mason.
Malacarne is from Brazil and is a international MTB rider, Frenchman Boichis won the MTB junior world title last year and Mason is the U23 cyclocross champion in Britain as well as taking bronze in the U23 Europeans last year.
More to come.
