Ronan Tuomey victorious at drama-filled Kanturk Three Day
Ronan Tuomey lines out the bunch in pursuit of the breakaway on the final stage of the Kanturk Three Day (All photos by John Coleman)
By Brian Canty
Ronan Tuomey took overall victory in the O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Three-Day at the weekend.
The Irish junior international from Cork laid the foundations for the win with a brilliant time on Sunday’s stage 2 time-trial.
He retained his leader’s yellow jersey on the subsequent two stages.
PJ Doogan (Velo Café Magasin) won the opening stage in a sprint from a breakaway, with Tuomey in 2nd place.
Tuomey then moved into poll position with his stage 2 TT win. And though breakaways survived on the penultimate and final stages, neither gained enough time to dislodge Tuomey.
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Michael Crowley (Blarney CC) won both stage 3 and stage 4 in sprints from breakaways.
Having taken the yellow jersey of outright winner, Tuomey is now targeting more success in the immediate future.
“It was harder racing than last year, so it's probably my biggest win as a junior,” he said.
“After the first stage, there were such big gaps which I was surprised at. But I was very surprised with how much I won the TT by.”
Indeed, he blitzed the eight-kilometre course in 10:10 which was a whole 22 seconds faster than the next man.
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Top, PJ Doogan takes the opening stage. Middle, Blarney's Michael Crowley wins stage 3. Bottom, Crowley victorious again on stage 4 yesterday (All photos by JohnColeman)
“Considering the wind on the day I would've thought the gaps would've been a lot smaller,” he said.
“But I was very happy to have a bit of a cushion to second place after that,” he said of Conor Gallagher at 34 seconds.
Stage three was a flat and fast 80-kilometre blast around Banteer and usually sees to a break going away.
Tuomey followed as much as he could but the one move he didn’t chase managed to creep off the front.
It gain 1:30 at the maximum before the race leader went into TT mode once more.
“Unfortunately for me, there was someone 50 seconds back on me up there,” he said.
“So I had to do a whole lot of chasing, which really killed the legs.”
Tuomey plan for final stage
That set things up nicely for yesterday’s finale where Tuomey said his plan was to force a split up the finishing hill outside Kanturk so he could ‘relax’ a bit more.
“My plan didn't exactly work so there was a lot of jumping going on,” he said.
And when the main move went clear around halfway through the penultimate lap, there were no threats to his lead present.
“They stayed away getting a gap of 1:30 by the finish,” Tuomey said. “But the closest on GC was four minutes back so I knew I was okay.”
The big targets now for him are Rás Donegal in a month. And he is also trying to get selected for the Irish national team for Trofeo Karlsberg, now called Gersheim.
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