"My yellow jersey was gone, it was all over for me. But somehow we got Eddie Dunbar back"

Kieran Crean on the road in Kanturk yesterday. He survived a major scare to stay in the yellow jersey at the Kanturk Three Day A2-A3 race in the final stage today (Photo: Karen M Edwards)

By Brian Canty

Kieran Crean is this evening celebrating the biggest win of his career after a truly enthralling final stage of the Kanturk Three Day.

The Blarney CC rider looked for all the world to have lost the yellow jersey on the final day for the second year in succession when his nearest challenger on the general standings Eddie Dunbar went up the road on his own today.

The flying junior, who looks like he is already on a par with the best elite riders in the country, got two minutes when he only needed five seconds to take the overall win.

And Crean admitted that he abandoned all hope of winning when he saw Dunbar just ride off the front like he has done so often over the last two years.

"When Eddie went away on the start of the second lap the gap just kept growing and growing and I thought that was game over," said Crean.

"I had a big pull myself on the second or third lap and one of the lads said 'go back and rest' because he was worried I’d lose second.

“So I went back the bunch and just sat on Martin O’Loughlin’s wheel for two laps to hold second place, concentrating on his wheel,” he said referring to the Carrick veteran who won stage 1 and 3 in bunch sprints and was third overall this morning just behind Crean and Dunbar.

"There was a lot of lads pulling for me though; my own lads, the St Finbarr's lads, a few lads from Dublin. But in my head I was still resigned to second, it was gone I thought.

Crean said he saw Dunbar go but couldn't do a thing about it.

"O’Loughlin was marking him and I knew he had to take time out of Eddie to win himself. So I was hoping he would do a bit of riding.”

While O’Loughlin did put a huge effort in early on, he then crashed and injured his ribs, thus ruling out any more aggression from him. He recovered as the race progressed and was eventually third on the stage.

“I didn’t want to go chasing too soon,” said Crean of his approach to trying to defend his under-attack yellow jersey.

“I just wanted to keep my powder dry, waiting for a bit of support to get a chase going and eventually, that happened."

However, he said when the bunch was given a time gap of 1:50 well inside the final 20km lap it still looked like a race for second.

"We started talking then, we said we could catch him coning in the road because he was riding into the wind and the wind was strong,” said Crean.

“We thought we could make big gains on the flat. Eddie would have taken out a big gap on the climbs; 10 guys wouldn’t match him he’s such an animal. But we figured we could do something on the flat.

"I didn’t see him at all in the final few kilometres, I had no idea we were closing. I was just on O’Loughlin’s wheel, eating and drinking as much as I could and keeping the legs for the finishing hill.

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“I was nervous coming into the town too, I knew if there was a stall the bunch would get big and there could have been a crash and it’d be hard to follow O’Loughlin, but I stayed on him.

"Then, suddenly, I saw a rider up the road. I thought we had brought back everything except Eddie and when I looked it was him just ahead,” he said of Dunbar, who hung on to win the stage by just three seconds but needed an additional second to close down Crean overall.

“I didn’t even know for sure it was him until we crossed the line. A guy in a Munster Sensa jersey was there being held up, he nearly fell off the bike with the effort he put in.

“All the lads were saying it was very close, it was very close; me thinking it was second place they were talking about. It didn’t even enter my head and I didn’t get my hopes up that I could win.”

But when the photo finish footage was checked, the gap between solo winner Dunbar and the head of the rapidly closing bunch at the finish was confirmed as just short of the four seconds the O’Leary Stone-Kanturk CC rider needed to win his home race and dislodge Crean from yellow.

It was Dunbar's Munster Sensa team mate for the weekend Stephen Shanahan who took the sprint just behind him for second place, just ahead of O'Loughlin in third.

Crean was 8th on the day and it was just a well he was so far up the bunch as a gap of six seconds opened up in the sprint between 9th and 10th. If he had been at the wrong side of that, he would have lost the race in exactly the same way as last year.

“I can’t believe it, I still can’t believe it,” Crean said of the news that he had won after all.

“But in fairness to the team they rode unreal and brought it back, with the help of St Finbarr’s and two lads from Bray and UCD and a few others, they know who they are.

"Until I heard my name in the hall after the race I didn’t believe it; the Gods were smiling on me today. I’m just over the moon.

“But Eddie’s a great young fella, he came up to me before the stage and after and he’d shake your hand and wish you well and talk to you. He’s going places and I wanted to get my picture with him to show the grandkids in a few years."