By Shane Stokes
Rory Townsend’s stated role may be road captain within the Ireland National Team, helping to guide the younger riders in the race, but his speed almost led to a day one victory for the squad on Wednesday.
The 26 year old rider put in a very strong gallop at the end of stage one to Horse and Jockey, and appeared poised to win until Matthew Teggart (Cycling Ulster) burst through to nab the win.
He told stickybottle at the finish that he might have launched a little too soon, given the conditions.
“I opened up the sprint with 200 metres to go, which was quite early considering the wind direction and stuff,” he said. “I pulled away from the guys I was with. It felt like I was going to have it, but on the far right hand side Teggart just came out of nowhere and just nipped me on the line.”
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The two normally race together on the WiV SunGod team, but Townsend said that won’t be a consideration when they are going head to head.
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“We are definitely not teammates here, I definitely would have wanted to beat him,” he said. “But he is a really good friend as well. He is not just a teammate, he is such a great lad. So I am happy for him as well.”
Townsend is the oldest on the team and has clocked up a number of strong results, including sixth in the Arno Wallaard Memorial in the Netherlands this year, first on a stage and first in the points classification in last year’s Tour de la Mirabelle, and fifth, sixth and sixth on stages of last year’s Tour of Britain.
He has considerably more experience than the other riders on the Irish National Team, namely the under 23 competitors Dean Harvey, Archie Ryan, Adam Ward and Paul-Antoine Hagan. Team manager Martyn Irvine will be relying on him to share that experience with the younger riders this week but, according to Townsend, they are already doing things very well.
“Coming into the finish was really smooth. The rest of the lads were absolutely incredible, I have to say. Considering it is a really young team, that we literally got together this morning and I hadn’t even had a conversation really about how the finish would go, they were absolutely phenomenal. Every single one of them were absolutely brilliant. So it was really good from that perspective.”
Four stages remain and both he and they are hoping to leave their mark on the race.
“I am really motivated to do well here,” he said. “I have only ridden the Rás once before. I was carrying a lot of injuries with me when I did it, so I am definitely motivated and want to go well this year.”
