By Shane Stokes
Darren Rafferty may only have stepped up to the under 23 level this year but he shrugged off any question that he might need time to adjust on Thursday evening. Racing in the colours of his Hagens Berman Axeon team, the 18 year old added the national under 23 time trial championship title to the junior time trial and junior road race victories he took last year.
He blitzed the course to beat last year’s champion and the recent winner of the final stage of the Rás Tailteann, Kevin McCambridge. Rafferty finished 23.19 seconds clear of the Trinity Racing rider, while another Rás stage winner Adam Ward was third, three minutes 44.63 seconds back.
“It is really good. I am really pleased,” Rafferty said. “Another nice national title. I am first year under 23 so it couldn’t have gone much better. So a good day out and hopefully I can do something in the road race on Sunday.”
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Despite his youth, Rafferty’s time was the fourth-fastest of all the riders on Thursday evening. It was just 14 seconds off the silver- and bronze-medal performances of TT specialist George Peden (Team PB Performance) and Ineos Grenadiers WorldTour pro Eddie Dunbar, showing Rafferty’s class.
“I put in a pretty solid performance,” he said. “I am happy with the power and happy with how I performed. The longer time trial suited me, so I was happy with how it went.
“I couldn’t really have asked for much more on the day. It was my best time and my best performance so if someone had beaten me, then that would have been fine. I was content with what I had done. So a good performance from myself.”
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Rafferty said that it an objective to be able to win early on at the under 23 level. He gives the impression of someone who has set specific targets for himself, identifying benchmarks to aim for in order to ensure he becomes the best rider he can be.
“It was always a goal [to win in his new age category – ed]. And then next year to try to make more improvements year on year.
“It is always a challenge and it is always close. Kevin put up a really strong time trial as well. It is nice to have someone who is really pushing me. It could have went either way on the day. That was always something on my mind and kept me pushing right until the end.”
Rafferty showed his talent last year when he become only the fourth male in more than 30 years to win both the junior time trial and road race national championships.
He dropped his rivals in the latter and finished one minute and 53 seconds ahead of closest rival Dean Harvey (VC Glendale) and two minutes and five seconds ahead of a second VC Glendale rider, Jamie Meehan.
Since then he has had a successful first season with the Hagens Berman Axeon team, including winning the under 23 Strade Bianche di Romagna at the end of May and helping teammate Leo Hayter to take the recent under 23 Giro d’Italia.
The Dungannon rider is now aiming to perform strongly in Sunday’s road race, a competition which will see the under 23 riders lining out alongside Elite professionals such as Eddie Dunbar (Ineos Grenadiers) and Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), as well as other strong riders.
“I think the course is quite open to a lot of people,” he said. “It is not really specific to any kind of rider. And with the style of Irish racing, it is always open and attacking. So there are a lot of options, a lot of riders who could win. It could go any way on the day depending on form and how the race pans out. It will be interesting.”
