By Brian Canty
Ireland's Darragh O'Mahony has set his sights on making the national team for the World Road Race Championships at the end of September.
Though he only just last week completed his first race of an unusual year, the 23-year-old Corkman is hoping he can get a start at the Tour of Britain next month with his SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling team.
And he is hopeful he can do enough there to warrant a place on the six-man Irish team for arguably the biggest one-day race on the calendar, at the Flanders Worlds.
The bronze medalist from last year's National Road Championships is currently training in Nice with close friend and fellow Kanturk man Eddie Dunbar with an eye on the UK's showpiece race which starts on September 5th.
Advertisement
“I don’t think it's confirmed yet but I'm hoping to be on the start list for the Tour of Britain,” he said.
O’Mahony added it would not be possible to ride the
European Championships – if he made the team – as it clashed with the Tour of
Britain, but he was hopeful of pulling on the green jersey at the Worlds.
“Obviously I would have to perform well at the Tour of
Britain but we have more slots than usual thanks to Sam Bennett’s year last
year, so I´m hoping to be there.”
Related News
Riding for the UK-registered Swift Carbon Pro Cycling team this year, O'Mahony's opportunities to race abroad have been few and far between.
The global pandemic that wiped out the early season race
calendar, coupled with being a full-time student on scholarship in the
University of Limerick, means it hasn’t been easy to get a decent run at racing.
Even competing in Britain, where his team has focused its
main efforts this year, involved more cost and was more complicated due to the
pandemic. And so O’Mahony only got his season underway at Volta a Portugal em
Bicicleta Santander at the start of August
“Portugal was hard and hot," he said. "The
weather wasn't too bad the first week, around 27 degrees but it got up around
40 or 41 for the stage starts the second week which was fairly miserable."
He knew the level would be high, but was surprised at
just how high it was.
“The Portuguese teams, especially at that race, tend to perform particularly well. You had Movistar and a few other teams like Burgos and Caja Rural... but the Portuguese teams always do very well there.”
The chemical engineering student admitted he simply got around the first week, getting used to being in the bunch again. And despite his best efforts in the second week, he didn't manage to get away in any threatening escapes.
“I haven't raced since last October so I was trying to
take it as easy as I could, considering how long the race was,” he said of the
10-stage event, with some stages between 4½ and five hours.
He added once the first week of racing was complete he
tried to get into the breakaways on the final stages. And while those efforts
came up short, he gave it a good go.
Topics
