By Shane Stokes
Drawing on the same power that has seen her perform well on track and road in the past, including a number of strong results in the past month, Alice Sharpe repeated her 2019 success when she won the women’s road race championships on Saturday.
The 28 year old led in an impressive 1-2-3 by her IBCT team, with Mia Griffin and Fiona Mangan completing the podium. Another IBCT rider, Megan Armitage, appeared to be very strong during the race but was closely marked.
She launched a big move inside the final three kilometres but was hauled back before the sprint, having to be satisfied with sixth.
The collective strength of the Belgium-based, Irish-registered team saw the riders also take the team prize.
“There were a lot of attacks going in the last few kilometres,” Sharpe said, explaining how the finish played out for the group. “With the nature of the course…it was flat and kind of fast, so no attacks were staying away. It came down to quite a cagey sprint at the end. I was able to just hang on.
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“On the last bend, I guess with 600 metres to go, there were quite a few manhole covers. So I think there were quite a few wheels coming out there. There was a headwind coming up the finish as well, so I knew I wanted to stay behind a few wheels until I launched my attack.
"When I went I just went and didn’t look around at anybody else. I thought I had gone too early…I went with maybe 250 metres to go, but just put the head down and held on to the line. I’m very excited, I’m just happy to get the job done.”
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Sharpe won her first title in 2019, beating Imogen Cotter in a sprint to the line. How do the emotions of taking her second title compare to her first?
“It feels just as good, if not better, because I had a few years in between where I either wasn’t racing or other people were better than me,” she said. “It is good to get back into the jersey and prove that I can still do it.”
Sharpe took perhaps the best result of her road career in February when she finished tenth in the 1.1-ranked Vuelta CV Feminas race in Spain.
In April she, Griffin, the new national TT champion Kelly Murphy and Emily Kay smashed the Irish team pursuit national record by over a second while competing at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Glasgow.
Last month she and Griffin took a standout bronze medal in the women’s Madison competition at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Milton, Canada.
More recently she led the Omnium competition after three of the four rounds at the Bahnen – Tournee 2022 Class 1 track event in Singen, Germany. The points race didn’t go to plan and she slipped to fifth, but the performance was nonetheless an impressive one.
She has also been riding strongly on the road, netting 14th on a stage and 15th overall in the WorldTour RideLondon Classique four weeks ago, then placing 17th in the 1.1-ranked Dwars door het Hageland and 13th in the 1.1 Spar Flanders Diamond Tour a fortnight ago.
She’ll now wear the national champion’s jersey for the next 12 months. “It’s a huge honour,” she said. “It is just really nice to be able to take the jersey to Europe and show it off in the pro peloton. It is always amazing to be able to show off the bands and the stripes.”
