Roger Aiken is gunning for the An Post Rás and Commonwealth Games this year; seen here driving an escape in last year's eight-day around Ireland (Photo: www.blackumbrella.ie)
By Gerard Cromwell
National Cyclocross Champion, Roger Aiken was at the GPO in Dublin yesterday to cast his eye over the route of the 2014 An Post Rás and the Banbridge man believes that, at first sight, it suits him down to the ground.
“From looking at it there, it seems pretty hard down around Kerry, with tough, sticky roads and plenty of climbs which is just up my street, what I like.
“I’m trying to get Commonwealth Games selection this year so it’s very important that I do a good Rás. The selectors know what I can do. They’ve seen what I can do last year but I think I have to back it up this year with maybe another podium on a stage.”
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For the past couple of years Aiken has taken an unconventional route to the Rás, racing very little and focusing on training instead.
Last year, the only races he rode prior to the Rás were the three-day Tour of Ulster and the one-day John Beggs Memorial. But he still managed to finish eighth overall.
Aiken has a wealth of experience and admits he likes to train old school, without gadgets or gizmos to tell him how well he’s going.
“I want to do a similar sort of build up to the Rás as I did last year which wouldn’t have me racing a lot,” he said.
“I’m feeling a bit tired after the ‘cross season so I just have to be careful not to overdo it. I want to come fresh into it and hit peak form for that week.
“I’ve been at this for a while. My first Rás was in 2004 and I know how to train and you can hit it in the right form. Although you’re not racing, you can feel yourself getting better in training.
“I just go by feel and how good I can turn over a certain gear. I remember (two-time winner) Philip Cassidy used to tell me didn’t use a heart rate monitor or a speedo. He just went on feel. That’s what I do.
“I can go as hard in training as you can in a race over here. But to race the Rás, I probably lack a bit of speed so maybe a bit of motor pacing would help me this year.”
Revelation of the race last year, Aiken almost snatched the yellow jersey with a daredevil display through the Wicklow Mountains on the penultimate stage.
That effort saw him escape with two others and almost pull back the minute and 12 seconds he would need to win the Rás outright. In the end, he got 22 seconds and was narrowly beaten into second place in Naas.
“You sort of get caught in tunnel vision when you’re up the road,” he said of the overall victory attempt.
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“The blinkers come on and you just go for time. I didn’t have great legs that day. The first few days of the Rás I couldn’t feel my legs, couldn’t hurt them. Obviously that day I was able to feel them. It was hard.
“The gap went out to about 50 seconds or a minute but I guess it was always going to come back. I never really thought of the stage win until it was too late.
“I did a lot of the pulling in the last 5km. If I hadn’t done that, would we have been caught? We might have been. So to get a second on the stage was better than being swamped by the bunch near the end.”
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A maintenance technician in Northern Ireland Rail for the past 14 years, the Rás is another week scratched off his holidays. But last year’s ride proved to Aiken that the race is still winnable for domestic riders, if they put the effort in.
“I showed last year that when the situation is right you can get very close,” he said.
“I didn’t attack off the front. They let me roll off the front because the first three were looking at themselves. If you can be there or thereabouts, within a minute on GC, on one of those stages, you can near enough get a free reign.
“And if you’ve kept your powder dry, then the right man can get very close to winning it.”
For now though, a second stage win would do. His only other stage victory came after a spell in Belgium at the Sean Kelly Academy in 2005, when he infiltrated an 18-man escape group on the climb of Tullyesker, outside Drogheda, on the road to Emyvale.
“I remember I was the last man to leave the front of the GPO that year,” he recalls.
“The year before, I’d ridden for Dublin Wheelers and I was friendly with Brian Taaffe senior. He had a word in my ear the morning of that stage and he talked me up, bigged me up. He said ‘you can do this’ and put that confidence in me. I rode across to the break on the back of Malcolm Elliott’s wheel.”
Apart from former Tour of Spain points winner Elliott, Aiken beat some heavy hitters to the line that day including former Rás winner Chris Newton, British Olympic gold medallist Paul Manning and Norwegian rider Gabriel Rasch, who has since ridden for Credit Agricole, Cervelo, Garmin, FDJ and Team Sky.
With the gap to the peloton at two minutes and the hailstones lashing down, Aiken jumped clear of the break with three others in the final kilometres and outsprinted Norwegian Morten Hegreberg, Shay Elliott Memorial winner Kevin Dawson and Newton for stage victory.
Although he missed out on the yellow jersey that day, as Hegreberg won a bonus sprint mid-stage, it’s not something the unflappable Aiken has thought about trying to achieve since.
“Not really. It’s not something I’m thinking about. I’d rather have the stage win than wear the jersey for a day... unless it’s the last day of course. That’d be nice.”
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