Philip Cassidy, a former winner of the Rás overall and managing the Dunboyne DID-Cycleways team on this year’s race, talks you through the road today from Donegal Town to Cootehill.
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“Well, the climbs of Donegal are behind us now, but today’s stage is a long one; 100 miles from Donegal to Cootehill. A lot of the roads today are quite hard, they are narrow enough and twisty, the kinds of roads that may well suit a group trying to get away.”
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“It’s very hot today again, and with the length of the stage this is definitely going to be hard and we are again going to see plenty of racing going on.”
“At this stage of the race it’s obviously very clear to see that the Swiss team of the yellow jersey Nicolas Baldo is very strong. They seem to have great strength in depth and when you look at yesterday’s performance, with the yellow jersey being able to close a few gaps with his team mates towards the end of a very hard day and then be able to attack and win, that’s a real sign of class; you don’t see that kind of performance too often.”
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“It will be hard to beat them now, no doubt. But as the saying goes, it’s not over til it’s over. And it’s still very tight on the top of the GC, with a minute covering the top 16 guys. So there’s still two stages left, a quarter of the race, and some of the guys will definitely still be gunning for the overall win or to at least move up a lot on GC.”
“If they race hard from the start today you could see a lot of guys in trouble very early on because we’ve got six hard stages done now and people are tired. It’s very hot out there today and this is going to be hard even though there are no big climbs; a cat 2 at 92km and a cat 3 at 144km.”
“As I say, I think these are roads that are made for a group to get away. But I would still expect to see a group of 30 or 40 at the finish today fighting it out for the win. The Swiss have played their cards very well this week, putting a man in all the moves. But they would need to be careful today that they don’t do that again and just expect everyone else to chase because that may not happen. They will need to be strong today and again ride cleverly. There will be plenty of attacking.”
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