Mia Griffin (Roland) is on a high after her victory in the road race at the National Road Championship at the weekend but will have very little time to bask in that achievement as she had been selected by her team to ride the Giro d'Italia.
The race gets underway this Sunday in Bergamo, northern Italy. However, while the Giro will be a huge race for Griffin to unveil her new champion's livery, she will have to wait a little longer before she gets to race in it.
The women's Italian Grand Tour gets underway with an individual TT, meaning Griffin won't make her racing debut in the champion's kit until the following day, on stage 2 to Aprica.
Griffin will be the first Irish rider to start the women's Giro since Siobhan Dervan, the five-time national road race champion, competed in 2009, having also ridden the race the previous year. Dervan rode the Giro in both those seasons for Italian UCI team Fenixs.
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The fact it has taken 15 years for an Irish rider to follow in the footsteps of Dervan could be seen as slightly depressing if it were not for the depth of talent Ireland now has in the women's U23 and elite group, on both track and road.
Griffin's appearance in the Giro follows on from the women's team pursuit squad qualifying for last year's Olympics, in an historic first. Griffin was in that set-up alongside Kelly Murphy, Alice Sharpe, Lara Gillespie and Erin Creighton.
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Gillespie and Griffin are both World Tour riders this season and both have already claimed podium finishes in World Tour races this year. Griffin has also claimed her first UCI-ranked international road win this year, taking a stage at Tour El Salvador (2.1) back in April.
Also in the Roland team for the Giro with new Irish champion Griffin are Italians Giulia Giuliani, Vittoria Ruffilli and Giorgia Vettorello, Russian Tamara Dronova-Balabolina and Swiss rider Petra Stiasny.
The composition of the team, and the fact Griffin comes into the race on the back of a Nationals win, and packs a serious sprint, means the Irish rider will get her chance of a result if she has the legs.
The opening road stage of the race ends atop a cat 3 climb and while it is not very steep, it snakes uphill for 12.7km and will likely result in a thinning out of the peloton that will distance many of the sprinters.
And though there is a harder climb on next Tuesday's stage 3, it is out of the way early, meaning some of those distanced should get back on. That ascent - the Passo del Tonale - is 8.4km, averaging 6.2 per cent gradient. Though it does not officially begin until just over 10km into the stage, it is uphill continuously from the start line to the top of the climb; a total of 19km of climbing.
How many sprinters will get back into the bunch after the climb depends very much on how that early phase of the stage is raced. But it may prove to be the first shot Griffin gets at a bunch sprint.
However, the first very obvious, perhaps only, candidate for a bunch gallop comes on stage 5 - of eight - when the riders tackle a pan flat 120km course from Mirano to Monselice.
