Mark Quigley showed all of his class to win the final stage of the Charleville Two-Day. The Cunga CC man took the bunch gallop from Cormac Daly (Manor West Hotel Tralee) and Dillon Corkery of Cork Giant (Photo: Ian Redmond)
By Brian Canty
Ronan Tuomey has won the Charleville Park Hotel Two-Day after holding the yellow jersey he claimed on Sunday morning’s time trial stage.
The Cork Giant man did Trojan work in service of Dillon Corkery, who won Saturday's opening stage.
And the two first-year juniors made it two wins from two early yesterday when Tuomey won the 8km stage 2 TT.
Two seconds was his margin of victory over Cathal Purcell (Panduit Carrick Wheelers) with the aforementioned Corkery taking third.
That was enough to put Tuomey into the race lead for yesterday afternoon's concluding stage and after that finished in a reduced bunch sprint he was crowned the winner.
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It’s a huge win for the young Corkman who joins a list of victors that includes Eddie Dunbar, Dylan O’Brien, Stephen Clancy and Richard Hooton.
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Tuomey is one of the country’s foremost juniors and he did his chances of selection for the upcoming European Championships in France no harm at all with this latest win.
He was outside the medals at the nationals in both the time-trial and the road race last month but this will go some way into making up for that.
He had the yellow jersey going into yesterday afternoon’s final 90-kilometre stage and though the opening 30 kilometres was rather pedestrian, he took the onus upon himself to ramp up the pace on the climb to Ballyhoura.
That was in an effort to dissuade attacks and it had the desired effect as with the help of Corkery they thinned out the main group.
Eventually, two groups of two managed to slip off the front and after merging they built a maximum advantage of 1:40.
But strong chasing from behind – and a stall up ahead with six kilometres remaining - saw a regrouping coming to the line.
That paved the way for the sprint which Quigley took from national A3 champion Cormac Daly (Manor West Hotel Tralee) and Corkery.
More to come.
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