Sean Kelly half-wheels the daylights out of fellow Eurosport commentator Rob Hatch during a training spin at the An Post Chain Reaction team training camp in Calpe this week. Kelly said he had a real concern when he heard Aqua Blue Sport was happening.
By Brian Canty
Irish cycling legend Sean Kelly admitted he was concerned when he first heard that Aqua Blue Sport would become a ProContinental cycling team in 2017.
The former world number one said he felt the team would mop up all potential Irish riders while putting his own An Post-ChainReaction team in the shade.
However, on reflection he believes his own charges can benefit from the increased exposure on the sport through Aqua Blue Sport.
“When it was announced first, it wasn’t great,” Kelly told stickybottle at the team training camp in Calpe.
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“I said to myself ‘well, for us it’ll be a problem because we need some quality Irish riders and with the volume of Irish riders at that level that Aqua Blue Sport need and we need there are not many there’.
“So it meant the fight to get these riders was going to be more difficult.
“But that’s done and dusted and it hasn’t been as much of a problem as I thought it might have been and it’s worked out well,” he added.
Kelly expressed his best wishes for the team, but believes they won’t have it easy.
Sean Kelly in Calpe in recent days, getting ready with the An Post-Chainreaction camp for the new season.
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“The publicity that can be got from it, it’s definitely worth going into it but Aqua Blue Sport will have to do well and hopefully that’s the case,” he said.
“There’s no reason they can’t but when you put a team together from scratch, sometimes it can be difficult to get the thing to gel and you can have difficulty.
“But teams have done it before; starting at a high level and it’s successful from the off.”
Kelly believed the publicity around Aqua Blue Sport may bring sponsors into the sport in Ireland.
However, he believed taking on a Grand Tour very soon after the team’s start may not be wise.
“You have to see how the team will perform in the first six months of the season,” he reckoned.
“I presume it’s a Vuelta they’re thinking of because a Giro would be very early on.
No mistaking who owns this rothar.
“We’ll see in the first six months and then you can decide. You can have the invitation but always decline later in the season.
“It’s difficult to see them do a Grand Tour, for me. To do a Grand Tour you need a strong roster of riders.
“What does that mean? The roster of riders depends on your budget. If you’ve a budget of X million then you’ve a team capable of doing a three-week tour.”
He said it was hard to tell how the Aqua Blue Sport Irish riders would do but believed they had great potential.
“Brammeier, he’s a solid rider. Dunne is improving each year. Irvine was more so on the track and he didn’t get many opportunities, so who knows where they can go.
“They should be getting races that will suit them during the season so we’ll have to wait and see.”
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