Darren Rafferty may have had a lot to endure in the last 18 months, but it doesn’t seem to be holding him back. The Irish junior international claimed the 10 mile junior TT record in his first race for six weeks, after being sidelined with serious crash injuries.
After the pandemic decimated the season last year, and delayed this year’s campaign, he bounced back in May and took an impressive win against top quality A1 riders in the PJ Logan Cup.
However, just two weeks later he was on the receiving end of a very nasty crash; coming down hard in the Hilltown GP when he hit a pothole in the road.
Medical checks confirmed he would be out of action for a
while as he had suffered three broken ribs, a broken wrist and bruising on his
left lung.
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“For the first 24 hours I couldn’t lift my left leg,” he said. “But once I got out of hospital I started to get a good sleep and then eating well and trying to do everything right.
“And then about three weeks into it I started to feel
right again and I was able to come off the crutch and was able to walk around.
I had no leg injury, as such. But whatever way the crash happened, I had no
power to lift the leg. They were really worried because they didn’t know what
was wrong with it.
“For the first two weeks, it really annoyed me and I was
probably more frustrated than I’ve ever been. You’re obviously thinking about
what you’re missing out on; saying to yourself that you should be racing there,
should be going to France. But once that annoyance more or less wore off, it
was all about getting (my condition) back to where I’d been.”
Rafferty said while many people tried to encourage him
and told him he could come back strong next year, he was determined to get back
as fast as he could as he has already missed so much of his time as a junior,
due to the pandemic.
Just last week, six weeks after his fall, he was back in action, this time at the Ernie Magwood TT Series in Ballymena, Co Antrim, and scorched around the course in a new Irish junior record time. His 18:48 for the distance was an incredible 33 seconds faster than the previous marker set in 2017 by Ben Walsh.
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Breaking the Irish record was just the confidence boosted Rafferty needed and he told stickybottle he was now looking forward to the remainder of the season, the bulk of which he will spend with Team 31 Jollycycles U19 in France.
Asked if he expected to break Walsh’s record, Rafferty
said: “Not really. I think going into it I was looking for a sub 20. With
coming back (to racing) that’s all I was really looking for. But when I got the
roundabout (and the turn in the out and back TT) I was on course for a sub 20
time.
“So when I knew that I just went for it. The wind was
perfect for me, it couldn’t have been much better. It was a light headwind on
the way out and then I thought the wind picked up a bit for the tailwind on the
way back.”
Next up is his departure to France, where he will race with Team 31 Jollycycles U19. It is based in Carcassonne in Haute-Garonne, in the Occitanie region of southwestern France.
The team will be competing in top level French junior
races as well as riding one-day and stage race events, including UCI-ranked
races, in Belgium and Switzerland.
It will be an interesting challenge for Rafferty, who was an U16 international on the road and has won nine Irish titles across road race, TT, MTB and cyclocross. He rode the junior race at the World Cyclocross Championships in Switzerland in February of last year, straight out of the U16 ranks and just before the pandemic hit.
He said while the onset of Covid-19, and the cancellation
of the road race season from the first weekend of March, was a blow, he trained
hard as he believed racing would return.
And after the shortened road season he was looking
forward to the 2020-21 cyclocross campaign, though it too was cancelled.
Looking ahead, while France is his main objective he is
also hoping to gain international selection on the road in the weeks and months
ahead.
“Riding the Worlds is one of the biggest goals of the
season, it would be a great way to finish off the season; it would be nice,” he
said.
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