Fergus Keogh may have lost the final yellow jersey of the Gorey Three Day by just three seconds, but it was incredible that he was even in the race considering his recent ordeal.
The Moynalty CC man was out training just four weeks ago when he was the victim of a hit and run and knocked unconscious. He broke a finger and needed 14 stitches around his eye and was left with deep road rash on his face and legs.
After being taken by ambulance to hospital and checked out he was bandaged up and sent home. He was back training again two days later, immediately after he got his bike back from the gardai.
While a lesser man would have folded up the tent and forgotten about hard training or racing for a while, Keogh was having none of it. He was determined to make the Gorey start line and give a good account of himself. And he did both.
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On Sunday he was part of a three-man winning breakaway and managed to take the victory, and the yellow jersey. And while he lost the race lead on the final stage on Monday - to overall winner Conor Verbruggen (Bray Wheelers) - Keogh was happy with his performance considering recent events.
“They thought I had a fracture to my face but thankfully I didn't," the said of the aftermath of his crash. "The last thing I remember I was three minutes into a five-minute interval and then the next second, or certainly it felt like a second, I'm trying to get up off the ground and people are standing over me telling me no the move.
“When I hit the ground my head hit the tarmac. The helmet saved me but my eye was burst open. I recon I was swiped by a mirror (from a passing car) and that's how I got the broken finger.”
Keogh said his coach – pro rider Matt Teggart – cleared his training schedule for a week and urged caution. However, he felt well enough to get back on the bike.Once he resumed training he said Teggart was “fantastic” at advising and mentoring him towards the Gorey, his first big goal of the year.
On the opening stage, Keogh kept himself in contention by finishing in the remains of the peloton sprinting for victory. The following day was much harder and on an early cat 1 climb the race exploded.
And as a group of about 20 riders distanced everyone else, Moynalty man Keogh was in the middle of it. He said that group worked very well together – the Leinster team helping push things on – until about 25km to go.
At that point the large breakaway got a time gap and had two minutes on the next group on the road and Keogh said: “I knew that was it, that it wasn’t coming back together.”
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However, once that race-winning gap was confirmed, the attacks began off the front of the group. Keogh said he was determined to only join moves containing Leinster Team riders as they had numbers in the front to close down anything they missed.
When he saw Verbruggen attack with almost 20km to go and then Loughlin Campion (Team Leinster) go after him, Keogh knew they were a dangerous combination. He let them go for a time to establish a gap and then got across, making for a very strong three-man escape.
“We worked very well together and we knew if we worked we’d a fair chance of making it all the way and then a good chance of being on the (final) podium the next day,” he said.
At the finish the trio had 23 seconds on the next group on the road and in the final dash for the line, Keogh had too much for Verbruggen and Campion and took the victory. The top 16 riders were covered by 46 seconds and after that it was more than two minutes back to the next finishers.
The stage result meant Keogh took the yellow jersey for Monday’s final stage, but he was equal on time with Verbruggen and Campion. In the end, the attacks he was subjected to on that last stage proved too much, though he was so close to pulling it off; just three seconds to be precise.
He said the Leinster team in particular were “firing guys off the front the whole time". While Keogh responded to dangerous moves, Verbruggen and Campion managed to give him the slip on the last lap, as he was down to his last resources. He had the massive disadvantage of having the yellow jersey on his back and also no team mates in the race, though he “got a dig out from one or two lads”.
“My game plan was to try and keep the race together as much as I could until the last lap,” he said. “At that stage I expected everybody to kind of get a taste for the finish line and for the sprinters terms to take over at the front. That’s what happened on stage 1, when Drogheda Wheelers went on the front for about 10k and really strung out. And that's what I was banking on for the final stage.”
However, when Leinster surged forward with a number or riders all at the same time and Campion and Verbruggen joined that move, Keogh missed the boat.
“At 5k to go I could see the break just in front of me and I went to the front. I gave it everything and I did manage to get two of them back at the line,” he said of Campion and his team mate James Delaney being caught.
“But Conor (Verbruggen) and Ewan (Warren) still had a three second lead on the line… There's nothing much more I could have done. With 200m to go I was just empty and loads of riders in the bunch passed me.”
In the end, Warren (Unattached Munster) beat Verbruggen in the sprint for the stage win. But Verbruggen had managed to put three seconds into Keogh and Campion and that meant he won the race outright. Campion and Keogh were 2nd and 3rd, both on the same time.
However, while very disappointed, Keogh said coach Teggart reminded him it was just “four weeks since you were carted off to hospital from the side of the road.”
