Seth Dunwoody is one of the most exciting prospects in Irish cycling at present and the 18-year-old will waste no time in the weeks ahead as his first races will be with the Bahrain Victorious World Tour team.
The teenager, from the village of Hamiltonsbawn in Co Armagh, has signed with Bahrain Victorious Development this year. A UCI Continental team, it is the official U23 feeder squad for the World Tour team of the same name.
Under UCI rules, development team riders can be picked to race for their World Tour 'parent' teams through the season. And now Dunwoody has told stickybottle he will get his 2025 road campaign underway with "the big boys" in the World Tour team.
He will line out on March 8th and 9th in Belgium for two one-day races; Grand Prix Criquielion (1.1) and Grote prijs Jean-Pierre Monseré. He will then go on to Italy and ride the one-day race Popolarissima (1.2) on March 16th, which is team won last year, when it rode as CTF Victorious.
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"Bahrain Victorious has a 'devo' team, and even a lot of young riders in the World Tour team who need to be doing these races. So they've upped their calendar for this year and split it into A, B and C tier races," Dunwoody said of the team's plan to assign development and World Tour riders to different types of events this year.
"So I'm starting with the big boys just for these two races and I need to just work towards that," he added of the two first races coming up in just over one month's time.
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The 200km Grand Prix Criquielion was won last year by Alec Segaert (Lotto) in a sprint from a reduced bunch. The Grote prijs Jean-Pierre Monseré, also 200km, was won by Jarne Van de Paar (Lotto), also in a sprint from a large group.
Looking ahead to Popolarissima in mid March, that was 175km last year and won by Daniel Skerl of CTF Victorious, the same team Dunwoody is riding for this year, though it is now under new backing and officially the development team of Bahrain Victorious.
That is the flattest race of the three on Dunwoody's radar for the first weeks of the season. And he said the team would need to perform considering it is an Italian outfit and won the race 12 months ago.
"There's big pressure to win it again now that we've got Bahrain written on our backs," he said. "It's a pretty flat race and we're sending a strong sprint team to it."
For later in the year, he said he would jump at the chance of riding for Ireland in reply to stickybottle mentioning the possibility of Tour de l'Avenir.
"I think that's always in the back of my mind," he said. "I know you wouldn't go out and target things that are not set in stone, you wouldn't be putting them down as a number one target. But anytime there's an opportunity to race for Ireland… I love, love, being with the national team.
"You're with people from Ireland and you have the same background from the racing and the craic is always good. So if there was an opportunity to ride for Ireland, I would snap at it this year."
