After a series of wins and other strong rides, Daire Feeley believes he can challenge for a place on the national team. Seen here taking his latest victory in Stamullen on Sunday.
By Brian Canty
The country’s top ranked junior rider, Daire Feeley’s is a name few were familiar with at the start of this season. But he’s a young man you can expect to hear more of in 2014 after a lightening start to the new campaign.
The Roscommon teenager, riding with the Donamon Dynamos club in his second year as a junior, had a difficult season in 2013.
But after “getting his act together” over the winter he believes he’s equipped to challenge the more established juniors for a place on an Irish team before the year is out.
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“I’m delighted to be where I am at the top, I really am,” he told stickybottle, referring to the official Cycling Ireland rider rankings.
“I didn’t do much training last year but to be top of the leader board in mid-April is a great thing for me.”
Feeley won in Stamullen on Sunday and also took victory at the Coombes-Conor Memorial in Drogheda the weekend before last. He also won the Lucan GP last month but the result that gave him most satisfaction was his second-place in Rás Naomh Finian, he said.
“We got away with eventual winner Ciarán Kelly (Bikeworx Celbridge) and a guy from Usher (Sean Bracken) and we put three minutes into the bunch at one stage, averaging 45 kilometres an hour,” he said.
“And to compete with Kelly was a great feeling, someone with years of experience. That gave me great satisfaction. Hopefully there’s more to come.”
Feeley said his form has been the result of hard training and a new focus.
“I really knuckled down with training and got my shit together last winter,” he notes matter of fact.
“It’s all been going my way so far. I was on the bike five times a week, doing long steady miles all winter. I haven’t started any intervals yet so it’s looking good.
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“The junior standard is so high here now, there are so many good guys and I learnt one thing last year and it’s that if you’re not prepared you’re wasting your time.
“There’s guys like Eddie Dunbar and Mark Downey, who we all know. But there’s loads who can win. Ryan Reilly has really come on, no one even knew him before now and he’s flying.
“That's why I think the nationals will be a hair raiser, and the Junior Tour as well. And they’ll be what I will be going for.”
He said he has no fear of any of the more established guys, having beaten them as a youth rider. Making an Irish team is an ambition that burns brightly with him.
“I honestly think I can do it,” he says of possible national selection.
“I raced those guys like Dunbar and Downey before and I know if I had a team around me I think I could stick it to them. But at the same time, if I got on an Irish team I’d have no problem working as a domestique for either of them.”
To that end, he knows the nationals will be key. And given his lower profile, for now at any rate; he feels that could stand to him.
“You never know who could win. No one expected Fintan Ryan last year. Everyone was watching Thomas Fallon, Eddie Dunbar, Dylan Foley, Dylan O’Brien and Mark Downey. But no one even knew a break went away because they were focussing on Eddie Dunbar so much.
“Look at Liam Corcoran the year before; hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work and I can work harder than most.”
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