The UCD Cycling Club lads let the celebrations rip on the finish line of the Mick Lally Memorial in Summerhill, Co Meath, today as Jason Kenny took a brilliant win and team mate Conor Murnane took the sprint for 2nd place from Tom Regan (Seven Springs). UCD's Andrew Ryan also got himself into the top 10, placing 8th, on a fine day for racing that saw the main event split very significantly, with large gaps emerging.
Today’s victor, Kenny, is no stranger to the top step on
the podium but the Leinster road race champion outdid himself today. He
produced a powerful and confident ride, marked by real aggression, that saw him
take off from the front group with 40km to go and drive it all the way home
solo.
Advertisement
“It’s been a
pretty rough winter, I’m in final year in college so it’s been hard to fit the
training in so, yes, it’s a huge relief to get that now,” he said.
Asked what he was
thinking when he realised how far remained in the race when he found himself
off the front alone, he laughed: “I was hoping someone would come with me. I
won the A3 race here a few years ago and did something similar and I told
myself before this race I didn’t want to do the same thing again today! But I
did pretty much the exact same.”
Kenny was one of
the first movers out of the A1 group early in the race when he and Tom Moriarty
(Tralee Manor West BC) attacked and bridged across to the A2 limit group on
first lap.
Just minutes
after making the catch Kenny went again on the second time up the Dorey’s Forge
drag through the finish line and bridged across to the A2 breakaway in a small
group that also included Sean McKenna (Dan Morrissey-MIG-Pactimo) and Leo
Doyle (TWC Tempo Veldhoven), among
others.
Related News
After remaining
in that from group for about a lap, Kenny attacked again at the start of the
penultimate lap, got clear and spent the next 40km on his own. By the time he
came up the finishing straight to take the bell a number of groups had merged
behind him, with his team mates Murnane and Ryan in that group marshaling the
moves.
While Kenny had a
very sizeable gap going out onto that last lap, perhaps slightly more than a
minute, the chasing group could still see him and the race remained very much
in the balance.
“The hardest part
was that start of the last lap, that section getting back onto the main road,”
he said of the narrow and undulating section of the course. “But then it was a
tailwind back in to the finish for the last 5k or so.
“So I was pretty
confident that if I got to the last junction on the lap I’d have a pretty good
chance of staying away. And I set that last junction as my finish line and just
drilled it. Winning the first race of the season is a nice boost and then with
Murnane winning the sprint behind…”
Looking ahead to
the coming weeks and months of racing, Kenny said the big priority was to
complete his college course – physics in UCD – though the club had also secured
an invite to the Rutland-Melton
International CiCLE Classic in England in late April.
“Once I get the exams out of the way, it’ll be more of a focus on the cycling and winning today was great, I wasn’t expecting it,” said the 21-year-old who will put himself in the frame for international selection if he can repeat the level of performance he produced today.
- For full results from today's races in Summerhill, please follow this link
