Eventual overall winner Jake Gray on the front of the decisive breakaway on the final stage, with stage winner and FBD Talent Team 2020 team mate Michael O’Loughlin in third place. The Irish pair are wearing orange jerseys because Ireland led the team category.
East Tyrone’s Jake Gray, riding for the FBD Talent Team 2020, has led a fantastic team performance after taking the overall win at the Youth Tour of Scotland.
Carrick’s Michael O’Loughlin won the final stage yesterday and was third overall and Fermoy youngster Dion McCarthy won the points competition.
Aaron Swan also put up a strong ride over the three days and four stages around Perth in a field of 75 riders that included the best in Great Britain.
Gray wrapped up victory when he went clear in a two-rider move on the final stage; a very demanding and wet race in which the riders did 16 laps with a climb each time. When he got clear, O’Loughlin then rode across to the breakaway on his own to make it three up front.
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Once he made the juncture the two Irish riders knew the prize up for grabs was the overall win and stage victory and so they drove it for home.
The bunch behind never gave up, with the others in contention overall ensuring there was a sustained hard chase. However, despite those efforts the escape made it all the way to the finish, where O’Loughlin was too strong for the others and took the stage by two seconds from Gray. The other rider in the winning move, Alex Braybrooke (Velocity WD-40) was third in the same time as Gray.
Back in the bunch, it was Dion McCarthy who motored around the last lap when what was left of the peloton split further the last time up the hill. McCarthy came home in fourth place at 25 seconds, with Aaron Swan in 15th, some 35 seconds down on the stage where 24 minutes covered the field of 63 finishers.
As well as Gray winning the race outright he also won the category for first-year U16. Ireland took the team prize and McCarthy took the points classification. The only category the Irish did not win was the KOH, and Gray and O’Loughlin were second and fourth in that respectively.
While Gray would eventually take a really fantastic overall win and O’Loughlin grabbed his second international win by taking the last stage, going into that final leg it was Dion McCarthy who looked best poised of the Irish to make a move for the yellow jersey.
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The opening stage on Saturday was won by Luke Morgan riding for a composite team. The best placed of the Irish was back in 15th; with Gray filling that slot some four seconds down on the winner. O’Loughlin was 18th a further second back while McCarthy came home in 20th, relinquishing another two seconds and Aaron Swan finished in 25th, some 2:27 down.
In Sunday morning’s criterium, Edinburgh rider Stuart Balfour took the stage, with McCarthy finding his legs and taking 4th place, some 24 seconds down, and the Irish placing three of their four riders in the top ten.
The 75-rider field split quite a bit. Gray finished in 6th place in the same time as McCarthy, with O’Loughlin in 10th a further four seconds back and Swan in 42nd.
McCarthy and O’Loughlin then put in very strong rides in the 1.51km time trial on Sunday afternoon, with the former finishing in second place and being beaten to the stage win by just one second by stage 1 winner Morgan.
O’Loughlin placed equal 6th, some eight seconds down on the winner while Gray was equal 10th just 10 seconds down. It was the second stage in a row the Irish teenagers had placed three in the top ten.
Swan was a little further back in the TT but still put in a very good ride to take 18th in a field of 75 made up of most of the best schoolboys in Britain.
After those three stages, there remained just Monday’s tough circuit race. McCarthy’s strong rides on stages 2 and 3 moved him into an excellent second place overall going into that final stage, some 20 seconds back on local boy Balfour.
However, similarly strong performances by both Gray and O’Loughlin had also moved them up the overall standings. Gray was 6th at 32 seconds and O’Loughlin was 7th at 36 seconds, with Swan in 29th.
And when Gray and O’Loughlin took flight in the three-rider escape on the final stage they took their chance with both hands to bring home the yellow jersey. The icing on the cake for the Irish team was O’Loughlin still having the legs to blast home for a well deserved stage win and round off a very big weekend for the team.
With Gray the winner and O’Loughlin third overall at just one second, McCarthy was fifth at 13 seconds and Swan finished up in 24th place.
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