Liam O'Brien has been rewarded for his big season, especially on the climbs, last year with an immediate call-up to the Lidl Trek World Tour line-up for his first race of the season.
The Corkman, who started his cycling with Fermoy Cycling Club, is now going into his third season, of four, at U23 level and will once again ride for Lidl Trek Future Generation.
As that team is the official U23 feeder squad for the Lidl-Trek World Tour team, O'Brien (20) is eligible to be called up to the World Tour team for any racing, except World Tour events, through the season. The fact that call has come at the start of the season underlines the progress he has made and his move up the pecking order within the Lidl Trek network.
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Though it is just a few years since he traded in his Fermoy CC jersey, he is now going into a major international stage race, featuring some of the best riders in the world, on the same team as riders Jonathan Milan, the Tour de France stage winner, and green jersey winner, last year.
O'Brien was especially impressive in the hardest, and hilliest, U23 stage races in Europe last year. When the road kicked up on those major mountain passes, he was often among the three or four strongest in what usually stacked fields.
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His abilities were reflected in his results including, among many others, 2nd overall at Ronde de l'Isard (2.2U) and 4th overall at Giro della Valle d'Aosta (2.2U). He is now a regular in the Irish U23 team and is perhaps the best U23 climber we have at present.
He will get a chance to test his climbing legs at AlUla Tour as Thursday's stage 3 features a climb of 4.9km at 5.8 per cent gradient, up to the finish line. There is then a harder climb on stage 5, to conclude the race on Saturday. The riders will face 2.9km at 12 per cent, which won't be for the faint-hearted.
And while O'Brien is the top of rider who would prefer much longer climbs, they will still offer a good testing ground for him. He is in this field with Seth Dunwoody, the Irishman who has also been called up from an U23 feeder team to a World Tour line-up, with Bahrain Victorious.
Jamie Meehan (Cofidis) will also be on the start line, getting underway his first full season as a pro with the French team. And Dillon Corkery will be in a similar position, starting his first full season with World Tour Picnic PostNL.
Eddie Dunbar was also expected to be in the race, though his Pinarello Q35.6 team had not confirmed it's line-up at the time of writing. Team line-ups very often change, even after riders have travelled to the race venue, at the last moment at the start of the season.
