Dwayne Kirwan takes his second stage of the A4 O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Three-Day in this afternoon's stage 3 road race (Photo with thanks to Brendan Slattery)
It’s been a memorable weekend at the O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Three-Day for the Dungarvan Cycling Club and toast of their team this weekend is double stage-winner Dwayne Kirwan.
Kirwan wore the yellow jersey into this morning's time trial following his victory in the A4 race yesterday on stage 1.
The 8km stage 2 test was won by veteran rider Alan Ryan of Wheelworx.
The 49-year-old finished in the bunch this afternoon and holds the yellow jersey going into tomorrow's final stage by 14 seconds.
However, while Dungarvan's Kirwan lost his leader's jersey in the TT, he had more reason to smile this afternoon with his second road stage victory.
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He’s only in his first year racing, having played GAA prior to taking to the bike. But he hasn’t taken long to find his feet.
“I’m absolutely over the moon; two races on my new bike and two wins," he said.
“It’s my first year racing and I think I’m up to A3 now so it couldn’t have went better,” he said.
“I’ve done a couple of races at the start of the season but they weren’t so good; the Carrick-on-Suir race on St Patrick’s Day was cancelled (because of a crash in the A3 race that preceded it).
"And I blew up on the final climb at the Des Hanlon but I learnt a lot about racing in those events.”
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Alan Ryan on his way to the stage 2 TT win in the A4 event this morning. He took the yellow jersey and held it on this afternoon's stage 3 road race (Photo with thanks to Jim McSweeney)
And he put that knowledge to very good use both yesterday and today.
“Yesterday I knew coming into Kanturk for the sprint I had to be up near the front; I was fifth or sixth coming into the line.
“There’s an uphill pull towards the finish, things kicked off with about 500 metres to go and I managed to follow the right wheel.
“I saw a small gap 300 metres from the end, there was one lad in front at around 150 metres to go so I just went for it and took it on the line.”
It was a very similar scenario today for Kirwan who kept his powder dry on the flat 40-kilometre course which saw the stage settled in a bunch sprint again.
“Coming towards the finish there was a guy in front of me so I got on his wheel for a second, just to get a breather.
“Then the attacks came but I went on my teammate Aidan O’Connell’s wheel, he took me straight to the line so it was just a case of going around him…it was a great buzz, winning two stages out of three.”
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