Philip Cassidy, a former winner of the Rás overall and managing the Dunboyne DID-Cycleways team on this year’s race, talks you through today’s route as we head to Bundoran in Donegal.
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“Ever since the route for this year’s race was announced the talking point has been the stages in Donegal. It’s a really hilly region and over the next few days the riders who are just looking to get through the race will go into survival mode. And the guys looking to win big – get a really good stage win or win it overall, know that the time is coming to perform.”
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“But before we get into that end of the race, we have the stage that moves us into that Donegal region today, but on which there are actually no categorised climbs at all. So there’s a sense of calm before the storm today. Having said that, there’s never really calm on the Ras! So you can be guaranteed that on the 135kms from Westport to Bundoran today there’ll be plenty of action.
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“It is a fairly short stage and it will be cross and tail winds again today so I think it’s going to be a fast one. You just never can tell if a good strong group is going to get away, but if I was to bet on any stage being a bunch gallop I think it would be this one.”
“You clearly have between 40 and 50 really strong guys in the race. And the yellow jersey’s team is very strong; you could see that yesterday when they brought it all back together after the jersey found himself in the second big group on the road. So they are definitely very good riders and I think capable of controlling it today; in so far as anyone can ever control a Ras stage.”
“We can also see now that last year’s winner Bagdonas is top of his game again this year, as his recent form on the Continent suggested in the run up to this race. That means the An Posts will fancy trying to get him another win from a sprint today, so there is probably a lot of vested interest from a few good teams in a bunch sprint today.”
“You might see a pattern today of a group going clear, getting a few minutes and then being reeled back in by those teams hunting the stage win. But there’s always the danger when a group goes clear that there’s a few secret weapons in there – a few good foreign guys that are really strong but have just kept their powder dry so far. But I still think it will be very, very fast today and most likely outcome a bunch sprint. We’ll soon find out.”
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