Having seen dream opportunities slip away one day after school - more on that later - Tom Moriarty eventually go to rub shoulders with the best riders in the world many times last year. The 20-year-old from Castlegregory, Co Kerry, says 2022 with Irish UCI Continental team EvoPro Racing was a real eye-opener. However, while out of his depth physically in the early part of last season in Europe, he soon came to realise rapid progress can be made.
And while he told stickybottle he found some moments very hard mentally, especially one evening after a drubbing at the hands of the professionals, he had no option but to dig in an make a go if it. Last May at the Gullegem Koerse in Belgium he put in decent showing in the 171km event and was happy to survive. Remco Evenepoel (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl) went solo from the breakaway to take his fifth win in eight days - after four stage and the overall at Tour of Norway (in the wake of his Liège-Bastogne-Liège triumph).
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"He took 7½ minutes out of us," says Moriarty of Vuelta champion Evenepoel on that day, emphasising the sheer size of the step up to pro racing. "We were the main bunch, we weren't dropped or anything. We still averaged 47km an hour but he took 7½ minutes out of us…."
Moriarty, the 2019 Irish junior road race champion, said while it was easy to become intimidated on the European pro scene, competing against World Tour teams, he was very happy at the progress he made through the 2022 season.
"When your race with them for first time and you see how fast the racing is, you think they're not human," he said. "You see the first hour is at 50km per hour. And you're thinking 'holy fuck, this couldn't possibly keep going like this'. And then you might be mentally beaten before your physically beaten.
"But in these races there might be that one lap that's really, really hard and that will be the one lap that either makes or breaks everybody in the race. And if you can hang on through that, then you can make it all the way. The difference between getting over that point can be like being half a bike length further up in the field coming out of a corner. If you can hang on there, just at that point, you could be fine for the whole race."
While he said "winning a race is a totally different story" compared to fighting to finish, the whole experience of being away from home racing in Europe full-time resulted a huge acceleration in development as a rider. Even living in the same house with the other Evo Pro Racing riders - "learning so much off them about nutrition and everything else" - was like "being in the Love Island villa".
"OK," he laughs, "it's not the Love Island villa but the whole thing is a fast track relationship" with cycling. Like the other Irish riders in Evo Pro Racing, Moriarty said he was disappointed the team has not continued for this year. "Disappointed for myself but also for Morgan, who put his heart and soul into it, and for PJ, and all the lads involved in the team," he said of the Evo Pro Racing co-founders and co-owners Morgan Fox and PJ Nolan.
"But, look, if I told my 10-year-old self that I'd get the chance to race against the pros, even for a year, I'd have said 'no way'. You're looking next to you and on your right you've got Greg van Avermaet there and he's been the Olympic champion. And I was racing the day Remco got rolled out in his rainbow jersey. I'm delighted it happened but it's definitely a pity it hasn't continued. But you never know, there might be a chance it could come back."
Moriarty has had to shoulder his fair share of challenges in his career so far. A stand-out youth rider with O'Leary Stone Kanturk, he won the Irish junior road race title, in Derry City, in his first year in the category in 2019. The following season, his second as a junior, looked set to be another one full of opportunities and, hopefully, wins until Covid-19 moved across the globe.
"The week the first lock-down came in, I was in school and I was supposed to fly out for a UCI race with Team Isorex the following weekend," he says of signing for the Belgian junior trade team for European races that season. "I had Ghent Wevelgem with the Irish team the following weekend and the week after that the Tour of Flanders will Isorex. And then the next weekend I was supposed to have Paris-Roubaix with Ireland."
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But it all disappeared when racing and foreign travel - and just about everything else - ground to a halt in Ireland and through Continental Europe; the extent of what was happening becoming clear on that school day back in March, 2020.
"That would have been a nice four weeks wouldn't it?" he askes now rhetorically. "It would have been lovely to be racing onto the velodrome at Paris-Roubaix…."
With those plans wiped out, and much of the domestic season - including the Junior Tour of Ireland - going the same way, Moriarty was soon looking to the following season, 2021, to get the show back on the road. However, that first season in the U23 ranks was always going to start late as he had his Leaving Cert to prioritise. Once he got the exams completed he was looking forward to getting stuck into Irish racing again and he took a couple of placings in his first few outings. However, in just his fourth race back - the Galway Classic - he crashed out. And as he was recovering he came down with a dose of Covid. By the time the virus had cleared and he felt recovered, the "vast bulk" of the racing in Ireland was over and, again, he was forced to look to the following season; 2022.
Just weeks into the start of the 2022 campaign - and with his form very good after a productive winter - Moriarty was riding Rás Mhaigh Eo with EvoPro Racing and and was hit by Covid again - "which really knocked me on my arse".
Moriarty then raced in Europe in April, May and into the first weekend on June - that period when he was really learning the ropes and grappling with the step up, including completing the five-stage Ronde de l'Oise (2.2) in France.
But then some of the team, at their base in Belgium, came down with the Covid - though not Moriarty - and Evo Pro Racing was forced out of the Tour d’Eure-et-Loir (2.2) in France in June and Rás Tailteann immediately after it. That was a major blow for all involved. Even the riders who did not fall ill were sidelined due to quarantine rules at the time around close contacts. It was the last week in July before Moriarty was back racing in Europe.
Looking back, he says he knows he made some mistakes along the way. Going to to France to ride two one-day races last April, when he should have given himself more time after contracting Covid-19 in Mayo in March was one such moment.
"When you're racing in the Alps against the likes of your Thibaut Pinots, even at the best of times that's not going to be easy," he said. "I was a long way sub-par there and that continued for maybe three weeks. And that probably doesn't do your confidence any good.
"There was one evening in a kermesse in Belgium when I just had no legs at all and I went home that evening and I said to myself 'I'm really going to have to pull the finger out big time'. I just said to myself 'you're all in here now, you have to give it a go'.
"I think that evening I found particularly mentally hard. But after that I was fairly on the ball. If you look at the results, you'll see DNFs but every one of them tells a story. The ones at the start of the year… I wasn't really at the races. But I was there or thereabouts as the year progressed, I came around and I was happy enough with how things went."
Looking ahead, and still aged just 20 years and with two more seasons left in the U23 ranks, Moriarty says he would love to gain selection onto the Irish team, especially for Tour de l'Avenir. That dream will have to wait another year as Ireland won't have a team at the race this season.
He will race on home roads in 2023 with Manor West Tralee BC, getting his campaign underway at the Lacey Cup in March - "the world championships for Kerry riders". After that he will look to Rás Mumhan and Rás Tailteann and after the season is done it may be time to take up that place at university with he has deferred to date. But mostly, after so may interruptions and an eye-opening season last year - during which he really feels he developed - he wants a clear run at racing "and just see where that takes me".
