Roisin Lally will be on the national team for the UCI Cyclocross World Cup extravaganza in Dublin on Sunday and says she expects an "insane" day out with "wall to wall Irish people" savoring a unique experience in the Irish capital.
Lally's relatives will travel from the west of Ireland to Dublin to see her racing this weekend. She expects the experience to be "very special", unlike the last time she rode for Ireland when she started the Europeans just a day after suffering broken bones in a crash while riding the course.
"I'm really excited and ready to get stuck in and I just think the atmosphere of the race is going to be insane," Lally told stickybottle just five days out from the Dublin event, where she and national cyclocross champion Maria Larkin will form the two-rider Irish team in the women's elite race.
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"Being able to race for your nation is something so special, it's what everyone dreams of as a kid. Being able to pull on that jersey is incredibly special to me. This weekend, my whole family from Ireland is coming across to watch me race. And I'm so excited for them to see me race against the world's best.
"The atmosphere is going to be incredible anyway, but being in Ireland kit… I'm always pushed on by people shouting and cheering for me and this Sunday will obviously be wall-to-wall Irish people.
"With that one World Cup already under my belt, I know what to expect," she said of racing the Overijse World Cup in Belgium two weeks ago, finishing 41st in a race won by World Cup leader and U23 European champion Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Lally said her first taste of World Cup racing was "really fast straight from the gun, just complete carnage on the first lap".
"It was just about trying to take places where I could all the time and it was complete chaos, but just so much fun. On the first corner there was a girl that snapped her chain and took out loads of people, everyone was pushing.
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"Doing the races over here (in the UK), I've grown up with that aggressive sort of racing, but a World Cup is on a completely other level. You've got to be able to look after yourself, to make sure you've got room and to try your best not to be moved when someone pushes you.
"Even when you're pulling into the car park, there are reserved spaces for the big teams and you've got the Ineos bus there. And when you're walking through, you're the only actual rider going to sign on because everyone else is sending a swanny (soigneur) to sign on for them. So you're saying to yourself 'I'm definitely a small fish in a big pond here'… but it's so cool."
Lally, a 19-year-old second-year psychology student at Loughborough University, grew up in Northumberland. But she loved racing in Ireland, where he father's family is from, when she was a youth rider. "It's always been really special for me, I'd beg my dad to bring me over to Ireland to race from a very young age."
She is excited to take the next step in Dublin and said when she did a smaller race in Belgium before the World Cup last month she was on the start line with Marianne Vos (Jumbo Visma); waiting to be called to the start so she could race against a rider she had watched for years on television.
"It's really exciting getting to ride those races in Belgium," Lally said. "But it could be intimidating and you have to switch off and say 'I'm competing against the world's best so I've got to stay in my own lane and race as hard as a I can'."
Lally won't need any extra motivation this Sunday but has a point to prove following a difficult experience when she last gained national selection. She competed on the Irish team in the U23 race at the European Cyclocross Championships in the Netherlands last year, battling through to even start - and also finish - despite a very painful injury.
"I crashed in practice and broke my finger and my hand but still raced the next day," she said. "Obviously it was a disappointing race but I thought 'well, I've come all this way, I've prepared and I'll just leave everything out there'. It's not going to be right when you can't hold the bars. But with that being my last ride in national team kit, I'm really hyped to give it a good race on Sunday and prove to myself I'm good enough. And I'm going to do this jersey proud. I really hope I do."
Lally said she had just completed a training camp with her university team, Loughborough Lightning, and felt the quality miles would add to her form ahead of Dublin.
