Eoin O'Connell ripped the Ballinrobe Three-Day field to shreds today, crossing the line almost four minutes ahead of the peloton after a chaotic final stage. Overnight race leader Daire Feeley (iTap) did his best to defend the jersey but had no answer to the Killarney CC man (Photo: Jimmy McElroy)
By Brian Canty
Eoin O’Connell has enhanced his reputation with an absolutely blistering show of strength to win the Ballinrobe Three-Day this afternoon.
The Killarney CC man came into the final 120-kilometre leg fourth on general classification, 33 seconds behind overnight leader Daire Feeley (iTap).
But he managed to win the stage and cross the line with over four minutes to spare on the dramatically-reduced bunch.
Today’s fare was held in really brutal conditions with strong winds buffeting the riders.
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And with four climbs to negotiate it was always going to come down to who had the legs at the end of it.
As it turned out, nobody could match the really impressive O’Connell who attacked on the second of the day’s climbs and was out front with just one other for company for over 50 kilometres.
“We had crosswinds where people were literally riding their bikes horizontally,” he recalled of the winds that battered them all day.
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“There were loads of splits and by the time we came into the climb at Leenaun the bunch was down to 50.”
There was a break of around seven up the road at that point but nobody in it posed any major threat to Feeley so he was happy to have it stay out there.
But O’Connell took matters into his own hands.
“I attacked on top of the Leenaun climb and went down at a frightening pace to the base of the next climb.
“The bunch was down to 20 at that stage. Then I rolled off the front going up the category one Ail Dubh climb and no one came with me.
“Shane Scully (Nenagh CC) attacked the 20 riders that were left and he caught me. Then I went as hard as I could for the last 50 kilometres.”
O’Connell went straight through the break with Scully and only dropped the latter with a few kilometres remaining.
“They were chasing hard for a while,” O’Connell said of the bunch, “but once the gap went out to two minutes they might have dropped the heads a bit.
“I was surprised they were all so fecked; Feeley is well able but he did a lot early on in the stage and I knew he might struggle in the end.”
Scully would come home just 39 seconds down on the stage and overall winner, but he next rider - the in-form Caimin Muldoon - was 4mins 13secs back. And the rest of the field was stretched 29 minutes back the road.
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