Mark Downey and Fintan Ryan - both champions on the road in their junior careers - will ride as first year U23s in new team colours having departed the Nicolas Roche Performance Team. Above, Ryan wins the Larragh Classic in 2013 (Photo with thanks to St Tiernan’s CC)
Former national junior road race champion Fintan Ryan has joined DID Dunboyne for the forthcoming season.
The 18-year-old is departing the the Standard Life Nicolas Roche Performance Team (NRPT) because it is focussed on developing junior riders and there was no commitment to an U23 team this year.
The move will see Ryan join forces with top A1 riders like Timmy O’Regan, Javan Nulty, Eugene Moriarty, Stephen O’Sullivan and Mark Dowling, amongst others, in the Meath-based team.
Through Dowling they managed to win the Kerry Group Rás Mumhan and the Suir Valley Thee-Day last year so Ryan will find himself in a set-up with ambition.
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Ryan is a talented rider and should have little difficulty making the step up to the espoir ranks.
However, his Leaving Cert next June could curtail his racing in the first part of the season.
Mark Downey has done what few Irish riders have ever managed; to emerge from their junior years having won a medal at a major championships.
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He won a memorable national title in 2013 when he pipped Dylan O’Brien ( now Aquablue CC) and Stephen Shanahan (Limerick CC) to the line after being in the day's break away.
Another rider moving on from NRPT is reigning national junior time-trial champion Mark Downey.
Like Ryan, he is no longer a junior and in his first season riding as an U23 with the elites he will revert back to the colours of Banbridge CC.
He is another emerging talent who should have little difficulty making the step up to u23.
His ability is underlined by the fact he took a silver medal in the junior points race at the European Track Championships in Portugal last summer.
He will sit his A-levels in June of this year which may see him scale back racing for a period.
He will be one of several riders looking to establish themselves immediately in what is shaping up to be a very competitive U23 grade; both on the road and the track.
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