The Irish junior riders make a welcome return to the UCI World Road Championships in Glasgow, for the women's and men's races. The fields broke up very early, with large numbers of non-finishers, in the undulating and technical course around Glasgow.
However, despite some bad luck, three of the four Irish riders managed to finish their races, with Liam O'Brien the unlucky one after he crashed on the first lap. The Fermoy CC man was then forced onto a spare bike and went on to engage in an epic chase as the peloton was blowing to pieces on the road ahead of him.
If the rate of attrition in the junior races - with the fields splitting very significantly even on the opening lap - great battles are in store in the U23 and senior races to come. Today, Irish road race and TT champion Lucy Benezet Minns (Tofauti Active) was the best finisher of the Team Ireland riders.
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The 17-year-old finished in 32nd position - of 98 starters - at the end of the 70.3km race, some 5:07 down on solo winner Julie Bego (France), who attacked on the Eldon St climb in the course with about 20km to go and managed to stay clear for victory.
The 18-year-old was just nice seconds up on the next group of riders - from a bigger chasing group - with Cat Ferguson (Great Britain) winning the sprint for silver nine seconds down on the winner. Fleur Moors (Belgium), who had been solo in 2nd position until just before the line, took the bronze after just about holding off Federica Venturelli (Italy).
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Aine Doherty (Team Ireland) also put in a great ride to finish the race, placing 50th at 10:12. Both Irish riders were on the wrong side of splits as the field split to pieces, before getting into groups and working their way around the course on a day when a quarter of the field did not finish.
In the men's race, Seth Dunwoody (Bahrain B Victorious) finished in 69th place, some 14:25 down on solo winner Albert Withen Philipsen; the Danish 16-year-old attacking from the lead group on the final lap to claim the title by 1:19 from two chasers.
Paul Fietzke (Germany) and Felix Ørn-Kristoff (Norway), a half brother of top pro rider Alexander Kristoff, sprinting it out for silver and bronze, with Fietzke prevailing. Ireland's Dunwoody was caught on the wrong side of a split early in the race before getting himself back into contention, but ultimately drifting away as the pace and challenge course began to bite.
For O'Brien, a crash late in the first lap before the Montrose Street climb really undermined his cause and while he spent the first half of the racing chasing hard - and limiting the gap to the bunch quite well - it was impossible to recover from that earlier incident.
