By Shane Stokes
It was telegraphed in advance. When Daire Feeley spoke to stickybottle at the end of stage two of the Rás Tailteann on Thursday, he described how he hoped things would turn out on Friday’s longest stage of the race.
“The third stage was initially the stage of concern for me. After today it might be different,” he said then. “There are a lot of hard roads around the Burren, and especially the lead up to Corkscrew Hill. I think the roads into the main climb tomorrow are actually harder than the climb itself. So that can do a lot of damage.
“Ideally we will limit our losses on the steeper climbs. I am a bit too heavy, I am not the best against the lighter guys. So if we can slip up the road in an easy move before it or something like that, we will see what we can do for the remainder of the race.”
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Whether or not the move can be described as easy is very open to debate but, sure enough, Feeley went clear with eight others inside the first hour of racing on Friday. Together with Adam Ward (Ireland National Team), James McKay (Cycling Sheffield), Josh Housley (Spirit BSS), Joseph Rees (Britain Embark-Bikestrong), Darnell Moore (Cycling Ulster), Conor Hennebry and Devin Shortt (both Carlow Dan Morrissey) plus Luke Smith (Meath Moynalty Cycling Club), the group built a lead of four minutes en route to Ennis.
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The peloton behind was unable to get back on terms and inside the final hour of racing Feeley and Ward pushed on and ended up reaching the finish line well clear. Things went perfectly to plan.
“I’m actually happy that I followed my plan for once, because normally it can be a bit of a kamikaze-type mission,” the Cork All Human/Velo Revolution rider said minutes after the finish in Lisdoonvarna. “I saw a good group of riders going up the road and I said if this was a normal Sunday race, you don’t let this group of riders away. So I went with them.
“We established a gap of up on four minutes on one point, so it was a nice buffer to have. Once we hit the area of the Burren, Adam started pushing on, so I knew he was a rider to go with.
“I’m just very happy. Very happy. I am actually lost for words, I don’t know what to say.”
Feeley isn’t afraid to aim big and indeed to talk with confidence. He said after finishing second to Ryan Mullen in last year’s road race championships that he believed beforehand he could win the race; asked after Friday’s stage was he surprised to be firmly in yellow, 51 seconds clear of overnight leader Louis Sutton (Spain Brocar-Ale), he was similarly assured.
“To be honest, no, I am not actually surprised. I went into this race with the goal of actually winning it,” he stated. “As I said to you yesterday, it is never as easy as it looks from the outside. But look, we are in the yellow jersey on stage three, two more stages to go. All the severe climbing is out of the way. I have a very, very strong team around me. We will give it everything to defend this jersey.”
