It may be only January but the pro season is already underway, with the first World Tour racing unfolding at the Tour Down Under in Australia. AlUla Tour gets underway in Saudi Arabia next Tuesday - and will feature Irish riders - but before then the Irish will be in action on European roads.
The 2026 European campaign kicks off with the 'Mallorca Challenge' series of races - one day events for men and women in the sun - and Irish riders who are at the start of their careers will be riding those events.
Marine Lenehan is one of those, with the Irish woman getting her first full season as a World Tour rider commenced as part of the Lidl Trek line-up to take on Trofeo Marratxi-Felanitx today, Saturday; a 129km UCI 1.1 event with four climbs, including a cat 2 ascent of just over 5km to finish.
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Lenehan - who rode as a stagiaire for Lidl Trek last year after initially making her name in international road and Gran Fondo events - is not the only Irish rider in action today. She is joined in the same race by the reigning Irish junior road race and TT title holder, Aliyah Rafferty.
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She competed for the Tofauti Everyone Active Majoco junior team last year and has since moved on to the Das-Hutchinson UCI Continental team. She gets her first season as an U23 underway in at the deep end today, racing against the World Tour squads.
However, still aged just 18 years, there will be no pressure on Rafferty, whose main job in coming weeks and months will be to familiarise herself with her team and the longer, and more intense, races she'll be riding.
Lenehan is also pencilled in to ride Trofeo Palma Femina on Sunday - 134.8km with nine short climbs - and Trofeo Binissalem-Andratx on Monday, when the riders face 108.2km, with four climbs, including a 2.3km ramp, at 8.7 per cent to finish.
Rafferty will also be in action in Trofeo Palma Femina on Sunday and is provisionally down to take to the start line of Trofeo Binissalem-Andratx on Monday. Those races would be a very useful early season stint, if the two Irish women do indeed ride all three events.
