David Conroy had a disastrous the European U23 CX race yesterday when he crashed on the opening lap and punctured. The Scott-Eurocycles rider has been dogged by bad luck while racing on the continent in the past and that trend shows no signs of abating.
By Brian Canty
Irish debutants JB Murphy and Craig McCarthy both gave very good accounts of themselves at the European junior cyclocross championships in France this weekend – but U23 rider David Conroy’s bad luck shows no sign of abating.
Murphy was 42nd across the line in the junior race while teammate McCarthy was pulled from the course by commissaires as he was in danger of impeding the leaders.
However, as a first year junior who only turned 16 in July he’ll have learnt an awful lot from the experience.
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Thomas Pidcock from Great Britain won in a time of 44:03 with Murphy best of the Irish around four and a half minutes back, though on the same lap.
The race was chaotic from the start and though Murphy and McCarthy were towards the back (due to the gridded nature of the event) the former did well to move up through the various groups.
The Murphy Surveyors, Kilcullen rider was on the same time as the race leader at the end of the opening lap with McCarthy slightly further back.
After that, the race began to break up on the hard and short climbs but Murphy settled into his rhythm and got into a small group who went in pursuit of a lone leader from Germany.
Craig McCarthy (16) banked massive experience and has done very well to gain selection for Ireland in his first year as a junior.
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That effort took the sting out of Murphy’s accelerations and he began to suffer on the drags, eventually dropping out of that group he was in only to be picked up by another from behind.
He sat in as much as he could but on the last lap his back wheel began to lose air which forced him into the pits for some service.
He pushed hard and caught a group of four riders but when he tacked on the back they were hitting the hardest part of the course about 600m to the finish.
Murphy crossed the line a spent force and could have done no more on his maiden event on foreign soil.
Having been informed that they were selected to race just a fortnight ago wasn’t an ideal situation for the Irish junior pair but by being able to stay in the front 30 of some 50 riders for a good section of the race augers well for both.
In the U23 race, national junior and U23 champion David Conroy suffered cruel luck once again.
The Scott-Eurocycles rider was up against several professional riders and as a first-year U23 there was little expectation.
As well as that he started from the back of the grid so to get caught behind to riders who crashed on the opening lap meant he was never ever going to get back into contention for a result.
He did finish, to his enormous credit, but four laps behind the winner was not where he’d have wanted to be.
Quinten Hermans of Belgium won in a time of 54:46 with Netherlands taking second and third through Joris Nieuwenhuis and Sieben Wouters, respectively.
In the world MTB championships this year Conroy broke a chain at the very start and had his hopes of a good result ended before he turned a pedal, literally.
And two months prior to that he had similar bad luck at a world cup event in Belgium.
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