Grant Ferguson is being tipped for great things on the bike in the UK. The 21-year-old rode the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last year and will spearhead a strong Scottish National team at the Kerry Group Rás Mumhan next weekend.
By Brian Canty
He’s the reigning British mountain bike champion and has already beaten some of the world’s best on the road.
So anyone with designs on winning Rás Mumhan must beat Grant Ferguson from the Scottish national team this weekend.
The 21-year-old rode the race last year but left it very much an unknown after he missed the decisive split on the Easter Saturday.
However, such have been his results in the interim that that’s unlikely to be the case come next Monday.
Ferguson is being billed as one of the brightest young talents in the UK right now and has gone from British Cycling’s Olympic Development Programme to the Academy Programme.
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He’s now on the Podium Programme – a pathway to the next Olympics laid out for talented athletes.
So far this year he’s ridden the Herald Sun Tour as part of the Great Britain team and took eighth on the opening road stage; a day that saw 21 riders finish as many minutes ahead of the peloton.
That the likes of Orica GreenEdge, MTN-Quebeka and the Avanti Racing team were in the race made his achievement all the more remarkable.
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He would finish the race 13th overall just 47 seconds down on Cameron Meyer of Orica GreenEdge.
After Rás Mumhan last year he had his first World Cup podium result when he won bronze at the UCI Mountain Bike (U23) World Cup in South Africa.
In June he was selected to represent Scotland in the Commonwealth Games where he finished fifth in the mountain bike event.
He was listed as a non-finisher in the road race, won by Geraint Thomas of Team Sky riding for Wales.
Two of his teammates were David Millar and Andy Fenn.
Following that came some encouraging results in more of the the U23 Mountain Bike World Cups where he posted lap times comparable to the top-20 elite men such as double Olympic and five-time world champion Julien Absalon.
He retained the elite British cross-country mountain bike title and achieved a career-best second in the final UCI Mountain Bike World Cup round in France.
He had a day in the mountains jersey at Rás Mumhan last year and would finish sixth in the U23 category.
He’ll travel to Ireland with a very strong team and we suspect he’ll be right up there challenging for stages and the overall.
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