UPDATED WITH PHOTOS: Murtagh takes his chance, grabs win at Harry Reynolds

No mistaking the winner: Eugene Murtagh was just too strong up the finishing straight

Eugene Murtagh (Lucan Staggs) pulled off a great win in the Harry Reynolds Memorial in Balbriggan this afternoon, Saturday, taking the bunch sprint that settled the race after the A1 riders failed to close down a relatively small handicap.

Murtagh beat Colm Bracken (Murphy Surveys) and Eoin Deegan (Eurocyles) in a sprint to the line from a bunch of around 80 riders in north Co Dublin. The winner had plenty to spare over the rest of the field and savoured what was a great win in fantastic sunny race conditions.

The handicap event was open to A1/A2/A3/A4 riders, with each group going off separately just one minute apart. But while the gaps were relatively small, only around a half dozen A2 riders caught the A3 and A4 bunches. And none of the A1s got on terms.

While there was a relatively small group of only around a dozen A1 riders, their failure to hunt the others down was surprising, particularly because the group featured some of the in-form riders so far this year including the likes of Ryan Sherlock (Cycleways) and Stephen Halpin (Metaltek SCOTT).

Murtagh said he joined some attacking from the A2 group early in the race but that it wasn’t until around the half way point that he got clear in the group that was to catch those ahead of him.

“We caught them with about four laps to go and then there was a lot of jumping but no matter how many attacks went we couldn’t seem to shake the bunch, they kept coming back. So going into the last lap I knew it was probably going to come down to a sprint so it was a question of saving the legs a little bit on the last lap to get ready for that.”

Having finished 3^rd and 6^th in this race in the past two years, he said he had been caught out in the past by leaving his sprint too late and was determined not to let that happen again.

“When Paul Kennedy won it I remembered he had gone right from the bottom of the drag and before anyone reacted he was away and had the jump. So this time I went first and I got that jump on the rest and I managed to hold it to the line. I knew Colm Bracken was there so I was thinking he would be pretty fast so it was great to get it.”

The Lucan rider proved by far the strongest in the uphill charge to the finish near Ardgillan after seven laps of the 7.2km Man O’ War circuit. He said he was now looking forward to the Gorey Three-Day but wasn’t sure how he would perform over the longer distances and with four stages in three days.