Ireland has a small – but very strong – team going into
the men’s road race at the Olympic Games in Tokyo on Saturday, with Nicolas
Roche, Eddie Dunbar and Dan Martin the three men carrying the flag.
The 234km road race is being televised on Eurosport 1,
from 2:45am on Saturday to 10:30am.
However, the end of that broadcast period will be filled
with analysis and a review of the action. So if you want to see the finale and
finish of the race, you’d need to be tuned in from about 8am at the latest –
depending on how much you want to see, of course.
All three Irish riders are now very experienced and though
Tokyo is a first Games for Dunbar, this is his seventh season riding in the pro
peloton and his Olympic debut is coming at exactly the right time.
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The 24-year-old Irishman has been going very well of late; putting in arguably his best ever climbing performance at the recent Tour de Suisse.
He was a late call-up for Ineos Grenadiers at that race
but went on to prove one of the very strongest in the event on the climbs. He
was central to Richard Carapaz’s overall victory. Dunbar also claimed the young
rider classification, which was his first classification win at that level.
An impressive climber, with a petrol engine; if Dunbar is
in the shake-up towards the back end of the race on Saturday he could really
impress.
He looks like a rider who is about to take a jump forward
in his career in coming months, based on his Suisse ride. He could pull very
big results out of the bag before season end; the Olympic race on Saturday a
fantastic place to start that, or to help the team to a medal.
Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche are Olympic veterans; Martin going into his third Games and Roche into his fourth. They are two riders who have a huge amount to offer and could combine very well, with Dunbar, on Saturday.
Given his palmares and his form of late, Martin looks
like the best bet of the trio for a medal. He was a stage winner and 10th
overall at the Giro and his stage win in Italy was perhaps the most impressive
on the race this year
Martin did not ride as well as the recent Tour de France,
where he simply did not have the same type of form he’d shown in the Giro.
However, he was clearly getting back towards his best as the Tour progressed.
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On the final mountain stage, to Luz Ardiden, he was 5th
and was looking like the rider we saw at the Giro. That was a really
encouraging sign for the Olympic road race. If the last week brought some rest
and decent recovery, he should be better again on Saturday.
Martin has already spoken several times in recent weeks
of his hopes for a result on Saturday. He’s made no bones about wanting a
medal. And given his palmares – especially if he can recapture his Giro form –
he has to be counted into the reckoning.
Roche is now massively experienced and while he has said
he wasn’t counting himself into the fight for the medals, he can have a huge
positively influence on the Irish effort.
He worked for Team DSM leader Romain Bardet on the Giro this year and every stage placed the Frenchman where he needed to be on the significant stages. His knowledge of the peloton, and the legs he still has, make him a huge asset.
Roche has said while his climbing is perhaps not as good
as it once was, he feels his power over rolling terrain is better than ever.
And that’s exactly the kind of asset the team really needs on Saturday before the penultimate climb of Mikuni Pass – with about 40km to go. That is where the climbers will look for force the medal-winning selection.
The largest teams in the race number five. And that means
while we lack the resources of those five-man nations (as we have three riders)
we are not massively outnumbered.
The nations with five-man teams are: the Netherlands,
Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. Other teams have four riders: Colombia, Denmark,
Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland.
With three riders, Ireland is on a par with Canada, Kazakhstan, Austria, South Africa and the
Czech Republic. The other nations in the field each have one or two riders
only.
While the event
is something of a lottery – certainly marked by a degree of chance after the
key selection is made – the big question is whether the Slovenians can be
beaten.
With Primož
Roglič and Tadej Pogačar both in that team – with two very big engines in Jan
Tratnik and Jan Polanc for support – they are highly fancied.
However, anything can happen over such a long and hard race and the three Irish definitely have the goods to combine and get a medal if a bit of luck was on their side.
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