Cycling Ireland needs to address short race distances, bring in an Irish road race programme and reintroduce the Classic League, says Rás race director Tony Campbell. Above, county riders battling in last year's race (Photo: Stephen Kelleghan)
Race director of the An Post Rás, Tony Campbell said while he agrees fully with comments made by former top professional Sean Kelly on the decline in domestic racing, he says his idea to hold the Rás in August is unworkable.
In an interview with stickybottle published yesterday, Kelly said the season faded once the Rás was over in late May.
He questioned if an August date would make for a more competitive domestic racing scene for the whole summer.
He also expressed concern at the small number of junior riders racing, saying that group was not big enough to truly push each other on and throw up internationally promising riders more often.
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He also believed domestic races were too short, saying the step up for Irish elite riders into the Rás was too big as a result.
Campbell has backed Kelly’s comments but said organising the Rás in August would prove far too expensive because hotel rooms are much dearer than in May, when the race is currently held.
“You can have anywhere between 350 and 400 people on the Rás and around 120 of them are the race officials and volunteers,” he said.
“So as things stand, the hotel bill is very high for the race; we would pay for a high number of those rooms.
“If you move the race to August, the prices go up everywhere and you might not even get the accommodation you need.
“The race is run on a very, very tight budget so if you increase the hotel bill to August prices, it’s not feasible.”
Rás race director Tony Campbell, left, with the man he took over from, Dermot Dignam.
Campbell also pointed out that many of those who run the race work all year to put it in place and that others who work on it while it is on are all unpaid volunteers.
“We have a great team and nobody is paid; myself included and Dermot Dignam before me,” he said.
“People have more family commitments in August with going on family holidays.
“And it would be much harder to get those people, who give up huge amounts of their free time already, to eat into family time in August.”
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When organising stage ends, people involved in the tourism sector regularly made comments to him and other officials that if the race came any later, accommodation would not be possible.
“They would say that even about June and July, not just the tourism high season in August,” he noted.
“We also don’t go into big towns for stage finishes; we go to smaller places because that’s where the race gets the appreciation. It would be lost in big towns.
“So that fact puts further pressure on the accommodation situation if you moved it to August. You’d need to be planning two years in advance.
“And even at that, I don’t think you would get the rooms you need and the cost obviously stays at top prices.”
Sean Kelly suggested moving the Rás from its current date in May to August to extend the domestic racing season.
However, he shared Kelly’s concerns at what he, Kelly, said was a declining domestic racing scene.
One of Campbell’s biggest concerns was that races were simply too short.
“Our boys here can’t ride 70 mile races before the Rás and then make the jump up in mileage for eight days in the Rás,” he said.
“You also have A1 riders racing against A3s and A4s too often. Even if we took the Rás off the international calendar; I don’t think we’d get even 90 home riders to race around Ireland for eight days.
“That standard is not there anymore. And the police wouldn’t want you on the road because you’d have bodies everywhere.
“Years ago, an Irish team would be sent to the Ruban Grantier and the Tour of Normandy as preparation for the Rás. Now we don’t even have an Irish road team.
“We need to address that; have guys in a programme like the track programme and get them riding in a national road set up and travelling a lot to represent Ireland abroad.
“Somebody like David McCann would be ideal to get involved in that; it’s down to Cycling Ireland to do that.”
Campbell also believed the federation needed to re-establish the classic league to give more focus to the remainder of the season after the Rás.
And he said Cycling Ireland also needed to address why there were so many races early in the year, but much fewer in the summer months and also what elite races were so short.
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