Former Irish international Stephen Delaney riding the first Nissan Classic as a fresh faced young athlete in 1985; exactly 30 years ago now (Photo courtesy Delaney family)
Stephen Delaney was part of the four-man Irish amateur team that took part in the inaugural Nissan Classic in 1985.
And though he’d ridden the Pro-Am Tour of Ireland three years earlier, nothing prepared him for that first ever Nissan day in Dublin on September 25th.
For the Dubliner, the goal was mere survival.
But alongside Anthony O’Gorman, Bernie McCormack and John McQuaid they had the makings of a very solid team.
“It hadn’t dawned on me how big it was until I rolled out of Trinity College,” Delaney told stickybottle.
“It was an amazing week for Irish cycling and an incredible thing to be a part of.
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“I rode the Pro-Am Tour of Ireland in ‘82 but it wasn’t on the same scale. The Nissan had such a big continental flavour.
“I was racing in France at the time but we I wasn’t used to having all these pro team cars in the cavalcade, it made us feel like stars.”
Delaney recalls being beside himself with nerves at the start and that wasn’t helped by being the first rider to puncture.
“It wasn’t a blitz at the start but it was still quick. It was particularly nerve racking for me though because I was the first to puncture.
“I managed to get the quickest wheel change ever and I was back in the cars within seconds and managed to get back in but it was still a big effort.
“The crowds at the roadside were huge and they helped.”
If the crowds were big in Dublin at the start, they were nothing compared to what Delaney witnessed later in the week.
“We went to Carrick on stage two and it was amazing,” he recalled of the welcome in Sean Kelly’s home town.
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“I knew the Carrick team from a Rás I did with them a few years earlier and I knew how much they loved their cycling, but the crowds were just incredible.
“Everything about it was amazing and you just lapped it up.
“My biggest concern that day was the start ramp; I’d never had a ramped start before and there was this lip across the bottom of it.
“So my only fear was I’d fall in a heap…thankfully it went well and that volume of noise was ringing in my ears all the way back to Clonmel.”
The other two big memories Delaney has of the week are racing up St Patrick’s Hill in Cork and Stephen Roche’s stage win into Limerick.
“Patrick’s Hill was a wall of noise, you came down around the corner at the bottom in the biggest gear and then you had to get into the smallest one and go straight up this mountain, four times.
“It was incredible. That was it for me; you knew you were in a major race then.
“There were so many people, it’s one of those things; you can’t hear anything and then you hear this one voice….it’s like a crash, it all happens in slow motion…probably because it did.”
Of Roche’s stage win he said: “That was classic pro racing, we’d roll along all day and then the speed would go up and up and up.
“The last 10 miles of the stages got so fast the bunch would be in one long line.
“I remember sitting in a lineout thinking ‘there’s no way I can go faster than this’.
“Next thing we hit a 90 degree corner and Roche takes off the front to win the stage and you just think ‘how on earth did he do that!’”
