After a huge month in the fledgling career of Darren Rafferty, the young Irishman is now turning his thoughts to the UCI World Road Championships in Glasgow and then taking the step up into the World Tour with EF Education-EasyPost. However, though the 20-year-old's ascent has been rapid, it has been no overnight success.
And at this huge juncture in his career - for both obvious and more subtle reasons alike, more about that in a moment - the Co Tyrone rider has taken time out with stickybottle to reflect. He has spoken in terms of a childhood dream come true for himself but also about a whole generation of young Irish riders now rising - the U16s, juniors and U23s who all "have the level", as he puts it himself.
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Rafferty - an ice cool customer not prone to over-excitement - says he was genuinely moved the day he signed for EF Education-EasyPost. Sure, he was being touted for the World Tour for a while. And the specific move to the US-registered team, the coolest squad in the peloton, was in the pipeline for some time. But when the day came to sign on the dotted line, and all the work he'd done since his mid teens crystalised into such a massive opportunity and reward, it hit him in the gut.
"I'll tell you, that was probably the most emotional I've been in a long time," he says. "Whenever I got the news they were going to sign me... As you say; everything coming together, given how long you've worked for it... That gets on top of you real quick. As much as you know it's on the cards, whenever you see it, you see it in front of you, that it's actually happening... I suppose it's hard to believe. It's hard to put into words really, but it's cool."
The fascinating thing now about Rafferty - and the exciting thing for Ireland - is that he has emerged, in the U23 ranks, as both a world class climber and world class TT rider; the Holy Grail of cycling. And while he impressed us long before this season, his 2nd place overall at Giro Next Gen and his overall victory last month in Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta-Mont Blanc mark him out as special. Those performances - and a set of lab results that moved the dial in a way few athletes can - are the reason EF Education-EasyPost boss, Jonathan Vaughters, describes him as a "headline" signing for his team.
Rafferty's ride in the Next Gen Giro, specifically his 3rd place finish on the Stelvio summit stage, announced his climbing powers to the world. But his ride on the penultimate stage of Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta-Mont Blanc - the details of which have gone under the radar a little - looks like the stand-out moment of his career so far.
The race that day was 172.5km from Verrayes to Fénis, in the stunning Aosta Valley near the border with France and Switzerland. Rafferty had stealthily climbed the general classification over the previous four days to start the day in 3rd, just 27 seconds down on yellow jersey Joshua Golliker (Equipe continentale Groupama-FDJ). When an early breakaway went - on a stage with five hard climbs, including a summit finish and with 4,579m of elevation gain - Rafferty let them establish a gap.
Then in the tailwind valley after the first climb, and with over 130km remaining, the Irishman took off on his own. It is no exaggeration to say he then put in a ride befitting the swashbuckling days of 1980s and 1990s pro racing. Leaving the peloton behind - containing the classification leaders and their team mates - Rafferty bridged a three-minute gap to the leaders.
When he caught the breakaway, he had team mate António Morgado in the move. The Portuguese TT champion then buried himself on the front for his Irish team mate for over two hours, up and over the next two climbs. His work helped pull the gap to over five minutes back to the peloton. And when Rafferty got to the foot of the penultimate climb - Campremier, some 9.3km averaging 9.1 per cent gradient - the Irishman went to the front and simply lit it up.
With the Italian commentators referring to his aggression as "wild", Rafferty proceeded to drop all of the breakaway men except two. On the upper slopes of the final climb to the finish - the 10.7km Clavalité averaging 8 per cent - Rafferty made sure of yellow. Sergio Meris (Team Colpack Ballan CSB), towed around for the day by the Irishman, got away solo to take the win. Rafferty was 2nd at 1:08 and German Mauro Brenner (Development Team dsm-firmenich) 3rd at 1:24.
Rafferty had gone on a 130km rampage and ridden into yellow on a day when the biggest group on the road in the top 50 was two riders, when the field was scattered 40 minutes back the road and the yellow jersey - who won two of the hardest stages on the race - lost over 13 minutes. If Rafferty goes on to have a long and fruitful career, when they write the history of it years from now, that stage into Fénis is where they will say it all started for him. It made his 3rd place on the Stelvio a month earlier look average.
Rafferty started the final stage in Italy with a 2:44 advantage over 2nd place Alexy Faure Prost (Circus-ReUz-Technord) and easily ran out the overall winner. It must have been very satisfying, even a relief after chasing a win for months?
"It was a nice feeling," he replies. "You don't feel like you're stepping up until you've shown something decent, a win at least... just something decent. It wasn't about relief. The win was nice but I just felt like I've been knocking on the door and then it finally came off. Obviously it took a lot of help, and I took a lot of time too. I still haven't got the hands in the air, it's a bit of a frustrating," he laughed of not having crossed the line first in a race yet this year.
World Tour rider
Days after his win, his contract - for two years - with EF Education-EasyPost as publicly announced. Now all of a sudden the kid from Co Tyrone - who first went to France two years ago for two months and won all around him - is bound for the World Tour. It's getting serious. Does he have to pinch himself, is the pressure building?
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"I think if I had rushed into it last year it would have been scary," he says of going pro. "But having that extra year of being able to race in U23, and knowing how good that level has gotten... To have these past two years to learn how to race a bike better than what I had been doing as a junior; that should go a long way.
"But it's still only half the battle. I have a lot of learning to do. But I hope with the help and the support of the team, I hope it's a smooth enough transition. But I think always the first year (as a World Tour rider) is going to be tough. That's always going to be a learning process - getting used to things, getting used to a new team, new staff, new bikes... all that stuff, it's always different."
Overall, he says he is delighted with where he has ended up for next season and thrilled to be on the same team now as Ben Healy and Archie Ryan.
"Ben was definitely one of the factors," Rafferty says of choosing to sign for the team after seeing the racing freedom Healy has been extended and the success it has brought him. "I'm looking for opportunities and trying to get to races where I know I'm going to be able to race. And I think there's no better place. It should be exciting... I need to keep improving."
World Championships and the new Irish generation
Next up for Rafferty are the UCI World Road Championships in Glasgow with Team Irelands. He doesn't speak in terms of specific results but the form book says he is a medal contender, on his day, in both the TT and road race. He says the TT is more predictable and straightforward and it may be where his best chance is. But he is equally focused on the road race.
"The TT is nice and long," he says of the 36.2km race in Stirling, Scotland, next Wednesday. "It finishes on a nice steep climb up to Stirling Castle in the old town. Apart from that, it's pretty much pan flat. But I'm hoping the length of it suits me a bit. I think the road race should be tough, a lot of people are comparing it to Leuven a couple of years ago.
"And I think it's going to be that same idea; the laps come on you real quick and then it's just a wearing down process - the elastic snapping on every single corner, every single lap. And then you'll probably get a small group, maybe 25-30 riders. That's probably how it's going to pan out, but who knows? It's the Worlds so it depends on the big nations with the big riders. You have somebody like Belgium bringing Thibau Nys, who would probably be the stand-out favourite. But we have a good team so we'll see what happens."
Rafferty rides on an Irish U23 team in Glasgow that also includes Dean Harvey, Aaron Wade, Odhran Doogan and Jamie Meehan. And in the years ahead, he believes so many young Irish riders are coming through - U16s, juniors and U23s, as well as some of the younger pro riders - Ireland should have strong male teams for years to come on the road. He even points to the performance last week of Conor Murphy, who took silver in the TT at the European Youth Olympics, as a key result for Ireland in the years to come.
"I think from this year onwards it's going to be a long time before Ireland doesn't have a strong team in junior men's and under-23s, and even the elite team in general. You look at that result of Conor Murphy's... There's plenty of juniors and under-16s now who have the level. So I don't think we're going to be stuck to select a team from now on that has solid strength in depth.
"The thing I have the most respect for, looking back now, is that the juniors and under 16s are working just as hard but they're also going to school. And they're coming home putting those sessions in at night. Now I have the luxury of not having to do that, I'm just training and that's really the only focus. You could be going to football training twice a week for an hour but to put in 15 hours a week as a junior on the bike, it's not easy, especially when you have exams.
"And I think with more and more (Irish riders) hopefully making that step up, that also opens up the way for even more of those juniors. The more we have racing in Europe the better and hopefully news about (pro) contracts won't be big news anymore, it will just become a more regular thing for Irish riders."
He says he is delighted to see his younger brother, Adam, and kid sister, Aliyah, doing so well. Adam recently won the Irish junior TT title - on the same night Darren took U23 TT gold - and has been performing very strongly in junior international races, especially against the clock. Aliyah, still U16, rode very strongly for Ireland at the Youth Olympics. She also won a stage of the recent elite Newry Three Day, as well as the climbers' and junior classifications.
"The last few months have been quite a high for the three of us and we've just been enjoying it," he says. "But you're always moving on to the next thing fairly quickly. It's been going really good and everybody's doing well, so there's not somebody being left behind."
Looking beyond the Worlds, the fine detail of the remainder of the season still has to be tied down for Rafferty. He has his eyes fixed on the European Road Championships in the Netherlands in late September. He also says he must approach the remainder of his season with next year in mind as the step up in 2024 will be massive and will be upon him very quickly.
"I'll see how I'm feeling, but that could be close to the end, tiredness-wise," he says of the Europeans. "I don't want to drag it on too long. I'll be starting racing again next year in January. The season comes on you quick and I'll be jumping up to 65 to 70 race days next year. So it's not going to be an easy jump, it's another bit of load I have to adjust to."
