Ben Walsh, Luke Smith and PJ Doogan fought hard in an all-out junior Worlds road race in Bergen. It was littered with crashes and run off at breakneck speed (Photo: Sean Rowe)
Luke Smith, Ben Walsh, PJ Doogan at Bergen Worlds
By Jimmy Lally
Competing against the best junior riders and strongest nations in the world the Irish junior team has battled well to survive at the World Championships.
This morning’s 135km junior road race in Bergen, Norway, split significantly. And one third of the 190 starters failed to finish.
But the three men with the green of Ireland on their backs stayed the course.
Luke Smith, PJ Doogan and Ben Walsh all finished in a 20-rider group exactly eight minutes down.
Coming as the race did after a long hard season, and with a small pool of juniors to select from, the ones picked to race today acquitted themselves well.
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Smith was 79th, PJ Doogan was 81st and Ben Walsh was 89th; all finishing the same time on a day when the last man home lost 19½ minutes.
Ben Walsh has been the junior of the season at home on the road. This Worlds perhaps came a little late in the season for him; the kind of form he has been in simply impossible to hold all year.
But he will take very valuable lessons from his ride in the TT last week and the road race today.
And he looks like a young rider who should now make a seamless transition into the Irish U23 national team.
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For Smith, his form has been best towards the back end of this 2017 road campaign. And he showed his condition was as strong as ever the weekend before last when he took two medals at the National Road Championships.
He was 3rd in the TT behind Walsh and Xeno Young. He then took silver in the road race the following day behind Ethan Downey.
Today Smith carried his form and aggression into his Worlds race. He was aggressive early and made an early breakaway.
However, he suffered a stroke of bad luck when his chain slipped. And by the time he got that problem resolved the racing was really on and the field had split.
Likewise, PJ Doogan wasn’t afraid to get stuck in and he made a key split only to suffer a crash; one of around 20 spills that littered the race.
The event took the riders over 135.5km. It consisted of a 45km stretch leading into the Bergen circuit, which was raced five times.
With an average speed of 42.6km per hour, despite the climbing on the circuits, lulls in the action were infrequent, to say the least.
Impressive off the front was the new junior world champion Julius Johansen of Denmark.
On the 45km run into the circuits, an escape group of seven had gone clear. It had one minute over the peloton when the race reached the laps.
The escapees would lead the way for most of the race; the eventual winner and three others getting across on the fourth lap.
Once Johansen made it up to the leaders he would attack them and ride away solo.
And though it took a while to pull out a large gap, once it began to grow there was no stopping him.
His lead swelled to almost one minute by the finish as behind him the chase group fell apart.
They were all caught by the 44-rider peloton, bar Italian Luca Rastelli.
He just about hung on for silver as his team mate Michele Gazzoli pounced from the main field for bronze.
World Championships, Bergen
Sat, Sept 23: Junior Road Race (135.5km)
1 Julius Johansen (Denmark) 3:10:48
2 Luca Rastelli (Italy) 0:00:51
3 Michele Gazzoli (Italy)
4 Niklas Markl (Germany)
5 Jake Stewart (Great Britain)
6 Florian Kierner (Austria)
7 Filippo Zana (Italy)
8 Olav Hjemsaeter (Norway)
9 Yevgeniy Fedorov (Kazakhstan)
10 Jacob Hindsgaul Madsen (Denmark)
79 Luke Smith (Ireland) 0:08:00
81 PJ Doogan (Ireland)
89 Ben Walsh (Ireland)
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