A
six-rider Irish team has been selected for the junior version of the Gent
Wevelgem classic in Belgium next weekend. Stickybottle understands no U23 Irish
team is being selected, though that has not yet been confirmed by Cycling
Ireland.
The
junior version of the race - GP Andre Noyelle – takes place next Sunday, March
27th, over 121km starting and finishing in Ypres. The junior riders will race over
many of the same roads the professional Gent Wevelgem race will take in later
the same day, including two passages of the famed Kemmelberg climb.
Due
to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ireland has not sent teams away to any junior Nations
Cup races for the last two seasons and the selection of a team for Gent
Wevelgem next weekend is a welcome development.
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The line-up is comprised of: Quillan Donnelly (Usher Irish Road Club), Adam Gilsenan (Club Ciclistico Canturino), Oisín Ferrity (Island Wheelers), Liam O'Brien (Fermoy CC), Patrick O'Loughlin (Panduit Carrick Wheelers) and Conal Scully (Carlow RCC).
It is a very strong selection and features riders who have been rapidly emerging in recent seasons and who have also performed very well in the first weeks of the 2022 domestic road season.
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Donnelly
has been a prolific U16 rider in recent years and has already placed 2nd
and 4th in junior races at the Mick Lally Memorial and Seamus
Kennedy Memorial, both in Co Meath, over the last two weekends.
Gilsenan
won the junior race at the ‘Mick Lally’ and was 3rd in the ‘Seamus Kennedy’
last weekend. He is a second-year junior and having spent most of last year in
Italy racing he was also selected onto the Irish team for the European Road
Championships in Trento, Italy, last September.
O’Loughlin,
now a second year junior, made his international debut at the European Track Championships
in the Netherlands last year. He won the A3-Junior race at the ‘Seamus Kennedy’
last weekend and was 3rd at the ‘Mick Lally’.
O’Brien,
a first year junior, has already made his debut for Ireland at junior level as
he is a top cyclocross rider who won the junior national title earlier this
year. He was picked for the cyclocross Europeans in the Netherlands last
November and the Worlds in the US in January.
Scully
is another second-year junior and raced in France for a period last year,
taking 4th in the TT stage of the La Ronde des Vallées (2.1). He also represented Ireland in the road
race and TT at both the Europeans in Italy and Worlds in Belgium last season.
Ferrity
is a first-year junior and has a series of wins at youth level under his belt.
More recently was runner-up in the A3-Junior race at the Killinchy Grand Prix last weekend.
