By Shane Stokes
Dean Harvey and Dillon Corkery may not have stayed away until the end of Saturday’s stage four of the Rás Tailteann, but they certainly gave a few grey hairs to Dom Jackson and the GB: Foran CT team.
Harvey was part of a six-man move which went away inside the first ten kilometres, with Corkery then bridging across alone soon afterwards. Four other Irish riders were in the break, namely Marcus Christie (CC Isle of Man), Paul Kennedy (Skyline - Cadence), Ciaran Maguire (Dan Morrissey) and Lindsay Watson (All Human-VeloRevolution), plus the Briton Kieran Riley (Spellman Dublin Port).
They built an advantage of over a minute and a half and with Corkery just 32 seconds back overnight, he looked to be on the way to another Rás yellow jersey.
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“I ended up in that move, just followed it,” Harvey told stickybottle. “And then it got a wee gap. Then Dillon came across, and we decided with best thing was to just fully commit and just try something.”
The move wouldn’t work out as hoped as the UK: Foran CT squad of Jackson and the USA: Skyline-Cadence team of second-placed Conn McDunphy chased hard. The break was finally recaptured inside the final 50km.
“It almost worked,” said Harvey. “Like the gap was near two minutes at one point, but they must have been well organized behind and worked well to bring us back.
“Once we got brought back then we had nothing left and then that other small group slipped away to take the stage. But yeah, it's okay. At least it was good that we tried and the KOM jersey is constellation, I suppose.”
Harvey had zero points in the mountains competition prior to the stage but winning all five climbs on Saturday, including the category one Gorteen plus the category two Carn West and Clogrenan, propelled him into the lead of that competition.
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“The mountains jersey wasn't even on my mind at all,” he confirmed. “It's just the way it the way it worked out.”
He is now on 45 points, two clear of Corkery, with third-placed Conor McGoldrick (UK: Richardsons Trek DAS) on 36 points.
Sunday’s final stage has just two category three climbs, namely Gabriel Howard’s Cromwell’s Bush and the Hill of Quillan, with a total of ten points on offer to the winner of both.
“If I need to go for it, then I'll go for it,” Harvey said. “I might as well take it and get something. But yeah, we are still focused on trying to win GC.”
Corkery said after the stage that Harvey had done huge work in the break. Being caught was frustrating but the course profile didn’t make things easy for a breakaway, with the last of the climbs over 70km from the finish line in Kildare Town.
Those flatter roads made it more likely that things would come back together, and so it proved.
“That's sort of the way every stage is, it’s as if it's designed to come back together, which isn't the best,” he said. “But you just have to accept the way it is and that's why we committed to hard to get the gap. But it still just wasn't enough.”
The Team Ireland squad will come up with a tactic to try to nab the yellow jersey on Sunday, just as it did last year with Corkery.
“For sure it’s possible,” he said. “I mean, especially with today, the other teams had to work really hard to bring us back. So tomorrow they could be in trouble, but it's a different stage as well. We'll just see what we can do.”
What helps is that Liam O’Brien is on the same overall time as Jackson, and that Corkery is just 32 seconds off. Yellow is still up for grabs, and Harvey will be giving his all to help his teammates to do that.
