Sean Lacey
By Brian Canty
“The yellow jersey has missed the split, the yellow jersey has not responded and is still in the main bunch.”
The commissaire’s words rang through Sean Lacey’s head and reverberated through the press and team cars at last year’s ‘Kerry Group Rás Mumhan’ to gasps of astonishment.
Lacey, along with his team-mates, had tried everything for three days in an attempt to whittle down a field of 180 riders.
But they still trailed race leader Bram Imming of the Dutch Ruiter Dakkpallen Wieler team by a solitary second.
Separating wheat from chaff was proving difficult and those pesky Dutch, in particular, looked unshakeable.
But, the early stages of that fourth and final leg will go down as the most enthralling stage in recent memory and a year on, Lacey still searches for the words to describe what unfolded.
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“I just couldn’t believe it,” he acknowledges.
“You could never plan that. You’d never think that the yellow jersey could miss a move of 30 riders where the person that was second overall, third overall and fourth overall was in the move and the yellow jersey somehow missed it.”
“We were coming down into Beaufort and I was just following a few wheels up the front and I ended up falling into a bit of a break and remember seeing about 30 riders in the break.
"There seemed to be a bit of a stall in the bunch behind and I remember Michael Fitzgerald [team-mate] was there and I said, to him ‘We’ve a bit of a gap here’ so we ended up riding on the front trying to widen the gap.
"Timmy Barry [team-mate] rode across from the peloton and told me the yellow jersey had missed the split. Then Cathal McCarthy [team-mate] came across too and that was it.”
“We didn’t hesitate, we just basically said, ‘this is it’, grabbed the bull by the horns and went for it.”
For 10 years he’d been trying to win ‘Kerry Group Rás Mumhan’, but little did he think he’d win it the way he did.
“I was very much motivated going into that last stage. I lost a stage-race, the Suir Valley 3-Day to Ciarán Power by one second back in 2009 and I remember thinking, I don’t want to lose another stage race like that.
"So the plan was to mind ourselves for the first bit and be aggressive for the small laps around the town (ten short laps of Killorglin always conclude the race).”
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“It obviously didn’t happen like that and we won because my team-mates reacted so fast.
"There was no hesitation, we had this window, maybe a 30-second window where we all got together and rode very hard, opened up the gap, and then maintained it.”
Lacey, 29, from Tralee but living in Croom and working in CIT as a Maths lecturer is one of the most prolific riders on the domestic scene. Traditionally he begins the season like a bat out of hell, blitzing all before him in the early races.
Just last month he collected his fourth Lacey Cup in-a-row, and such is his prowess in the peloton that the question had to be asked, what’s the secret?
“There is none,” he deadpans. “Just training. Training, training, training.
“I’d be leaving my house between five and half five in the morning so I’m down in Cork for work in an hour and then I go training for two hours before my lecturing at nine.
"It is gone a bit darker now in the mornings with the hour (gone forward) but the last two weeks there it was getting bright at half six or seven o’clock so it was nice enough.
"Beforehand it was just a case of going out in the dark. I’d have been doing that since December and January. It’s the only way to get the training in.”
“It’d be great if I didn’t have to do the early starts but unfortunately if I want to be competitive in (Ras Mumhan) I have to be training every day, within reason.”
To Lacey, there is no magic potion. His winning-formula is mileage plus dedication and that sees him rack up a whopping 360 miles a week in winter, or almost 1,500 miles a month on the bike.
"But he’s not complaining, and sees it as a means to an end. You just get on with it,” he offers.
“When you have number one on your back as the defending champion, as Tim Barry found out last year, you are the guy who’s going to be watched and everyone will keep a close eye on you.
"But that comes with having won the race. That’s what people expect so there’s no point giving out or anything. You just ride the race and do what you can.”
Lacey will be riding as part of the Dan Morrissey/Speedy Spokes cycling team, a team only formed three years ago and rebranded this year.
But already they’ve become the most feared team in the country, having won the team prize at last year’s An Post Rás.
His team-mate Tim Barry won ‘Kerry Group Ras Mumhan’ in 2010, so can they make it a three-in-a-row?
“We have to be realistic; very few people have won two in-a-row in it. I’m very fortunate to have won it once so I’m happy with that. I’ll be going in to get it (yellow jersey) again but I know it’s going to be hard.
"You look at that start-list and you can say, there’s maybe 10 or 20 potential winners there. Some of them, of course, will be out of contention after the first day.”
“But I’m looking forward to it. I’m delighted with the route they’ve picked. The form feels good and I’m part of a very strong team. Páidi O’Brien has the potential to win.
"Tim Barry has the potential to win so the pressure isn’t all on me. We’ve a few lads who can win so if I’m being marked out of it, then so be it, but if the lads get up in the break I’ll help them to try and win.”
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