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 final stage into Skerries today.
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“For a lot of riders, this last day of the race will be a great one for them. With all the really hard climbs behind them now, all they have to do is get through one last stage and they have a Ras under their belts. But for some of the really strong riders who haven’t got what they wanted out of the week so far, there are still plenty of reasons to ride really hard today.”
“Ahead of us we have 139km from Cootehill into Skerries for a couple of laps on the finishing circuit. There are five climbs today, all category three. So it’s a day when the race will split again and if you have a bunch coming into the finish together today I think it will be a fairly small one.”
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“It’s always hard to predict how it’s going to go, but I think you might see a pattern like yesterday where you have hard racing at the start until a group gets up the road. Then they may be let get a few minutes like yesterday, with the stronger teams feeling pretty confident they can reel them in at the end.”
“It’s still really, really close at the top of the GC with 16 riders within one minute of the yellow jersey. So there will definitely be attacking today. We’ve seen Dave McCann on the attack in recent days. He won this stage last year and I’d full expect him to have another few hard goes today.”
“Then you have the likes of the An Post-Sean Kelly team; they will definitely want a stage win today and they need Bagdonas up there to get the points to try and win that classification. So some strong men are still chasing this race right into the finish in Skerries today.”
“How hard it will be for the home-based guys, the county riders, all depends on how long the attacking goes on at the start before a group goes clear. When that happens it will settle down a bit. But there are a couple of short sharp climbs in the stage that will feel quite hard after eight stages of racing. It will split out he back, but I think you are probably looking at a sprint from a small enough bunch at the finish”.
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