Ryan Sherlock’s strong early season form is showing no signs of falling off, with the Cycleways rider taking a very good win today in the opening stage of the Bog Week Two-Day at Tullycross near Clifden.
The Monaghan man takes the yellow jersey in tomorrow’s split stage of a morning TT and afternoon road race in the increasingly popular handicapped stage race.
Sherlock was off in the A1/A2 group today, some 3:30 behind the A3s in the 75kms stage; run off over two-and-a-half laps of a lumpy circuit.
On the first lap the scratch men combined well to try and claw back the deficit to those up front. But with the work rate equally as impressive among the A3s, the gap did not come down as fast as would have been expected.
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Once the A1/A2 group moved onto the second lap, there started a period of intensive attacking that played into the hands of the group ahead.
While many small escapes got clear from the A1/A2 group it was not until the 8km to go mark that pre race favourite Sherlock managed to get clear on his own.
From that point he went into TT mode and by the time he caught the leaders all but eight of them had been dropped and absorbed by the A1/A2 group behind.
Sherlock then pressed on strongly towards the finish with only Liam Frawley (Galway Bay CC) and Donnacha O’Brien (Cork County CC) able to hold him.
The trio arrived together at the bottom of the finishing drag, with Sherlock’s kick for the line distancing second placed Frawley by three seconds and O’Brien by 11 seconds.
Some 32 seconds elapsed before David Walsh (Slaney CC) took the group sprint for fourth ahead of Padraig Marrey of the promoting club Western Lakes CC and Michael Brady (Covey Westport).
Sherlock holds the yellow jersey going into tomorrow morning’s 5km TT, where he will be hoping to extend his lead and take another stage win.
However, even if he does that the A1/A2 men will need to catch the A3 group in the afternoon road race to ensure that the gaps going into that stage count for anything when the final GC is decided.
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With some very strong A3 riders taking part and with Sherlock the only limit man to get on terms with the best of them today, closing them down tomorrow is far from a foregone conclusion.
Sherlock said he was delighted with his win today.
“I’ve had a cold and bronchitis in the past couple of weeks so today was my last day on antibiotics,” he said.
“I felt good though, and hopefully it will work out tomorrow. I’m here to get some really tough racing in as part of the build up for the Ras. And I also wanted to come down because of the TT in the race; the nationals TT will be my next big goal after the Ras.”
He said while there was no climbing as such today, the course was still hard and made for some good racing.
“It was very up and down all the way and it was pretty breezy. It’s a really well run race and the area it’s in is stunning so I could definitely see it catching on big time in the next few seasons.”
After tomorrow morning’s 5km TT the riders face an undulating 85km road race in the afternoon.
Bog Week Two-Day
Stage 1: Result
1 Ryan Sherlock (Cycleways) 1:56:23
2 Liam Frawley (Galway Bay) @ 3 secs
3 Donnacha O'Brien (Cork County) @11 secs
4 David Walsh (Slaney CC), @32 secs
5 Padraig Marrey (Western Lakes CC)
6 Michael Brady (Covey-Westport)
7 Daniel Kirwan (Lucan CRC)
8 Frank Dunne (Slaney CC)
9 Keith Fox (Shannonside CC)
10 Derek Joyce (Galway Bay) all same time
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