By Shane Stokes
Cormac McGeough had a rollercoaster of emotions over a 24 hour period at the Rás Tailteann, with last year’s runner-up seeing his GC chances evaporate on Thursday’s tough climbing stage to Sneem, and then bouncing back with victory on Friday’s race to Cahir.
“It feels fantastic. I’m delighted,” he told Stickybottle after the podium presentation, clad in the red FBD jersey of stage winner.
“A stage win was definitely on my list of things I wanted to accomplish. I obviously wanted to start and see how the general classification fight went. But I lost time yesterday just on the climbs, so today to be able to win the stage is great. To be able to bounce back and win the stage is wonderful.”
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McGeough was part of a ten man move which pushed clear with approximately 30km remaining of stage three and which built a winning advantage over the peloton. The Mexico: Canel’s Java rider then jumped away inside the final 10 kilometres and held on to win by three seconds ahead of the other breakaway riders.
John Buller (Ireland: Spellman Dublin Port CT) and Odhran Doogan (Team Ireland) led the chasers in.
“Things were going mental,” he said, with a loud laugh. “There was a lot of GC guys going up the road. Team Ireland was throwing boys up the road, and then Foran [the Foran CT team of race leader Dom Jackson] was chasing it back. It was pretty nuts. And it was difficult, there were a few rollers that were just super, super challenging.
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“The race came back together after a really hard section. And then I just attacked and went with another fella. We kind of started a group, a group came up to us. And then there were some guys in it that were keen on getting a bit of GC time, and they were riding hard.
“I was just hands off, just riding the wheels. And then when things started to break down with about 10k to go that’s when I attacked and got away on my own and just rode my face off to the finish.”
Asked how he felt inside the last few hundred metres when he knew he had the win, he said he wasn’t presuming anything.
“It was still up in the air a little bit. I honestly didn’t know if I had it up until I crossed the line. I was waiting for the guys to just come flying past me really. The distance between them and myself in the last kilometre was quite small. It was a great feeling, a lot of relief.”
McGeough was born in Snoqualmie in Washington, but has competed for many years with an Irish licence. So what is his connection to the country?
“My father is from Carrickmacross,” he explained. “I still have family in Drogheda, my uncle Brian and my auntie Valerie. I’m very proud to be Irish and I love being Irish. I love coming to Ireland. I love competing in Ireland. I love representing Ireland all over the world.”
While he has lived much of his life in the US, a question to talk about his hometown prompted him to say that his identity is linked to Ireland.
“I don’t really have a hometown,” he said, laughing. “I kind of just travel around, so it’s in a way it’s nice to have that Irishness grounding me because in reality I don’t have much connection to any other place.”
