Jack Conroy of Velo Performance celebrates victory at the Alan Towell Memorial and now he’s set to make his debut for Ireland, getting the nod for Rás Tailteann (Photo with thanks to Paul Hannigan)
Just a few months after confirming it was going to permit up to two juniors on the Irish team for Rás Tailteann, Cycling Ireland has named two junior riders in the national team selection for the event, Ireland’s biggest stage race.
Hugh Óg Mulhearne (AS Villemur Cyclisme) and Fionn Killeen (Kilcullen Cycling Club Murphy Geospatial) are both selected; deservedly getting the nod as they have been really impressive this season.
Mulhearne has raced so strongly in France he has been at the top of the official French junior rankings for a time. Killeen rode out of his socks at Dornan Rás Mumhan, including 3rd on the hardest finish, to Kerryman’s Table.
Along with the junior pair, first-year U23 Conor Murphy (Decathlon CMA CGM Development Team) gets his first nod for an Irish team as an U23 and his first in a senior race.
However, Murphy is very experienced already, having raced for Ireland as a junior, including at Europeans and Worlds, placing 10th in the Worlds junior TT two years ago.
Last season he stepped up a level again, winning silver in the junior TT at the Europeans, just weeks after being crowned national junior TT and road race champion.
Jack Conroy (Velo Performance) is also selected by Cycling Ireland and he will be making his debut for Ireland. Though Conroy has done it his own way in terms of development in recent years – racing in Belgium in Bray Wheelers colours – he has since joined his new team.
And that change appears to have brought about a big step up in performance. He rode very strongly on a racing block in Greece, in UCI-ranked races, at the start of the season.
He has since won the Alan Towell Memorial and the Bobby Power Memorial and has looked like a new rider this year, having a much bigger say in races, even on those days the results did not go his way.
Another man named on the team is Liam Crowley and he is the experienced senior rider in the line-up. Crowley has been one of the men of the domestic scene so far this year, with Pinergy Orwell, after a year with UCI Conti team, Team Vorarlberg.
This season he has already won the Seamus Kennedy Memorial, a stage of Rás Mhaigh Eo, where he was 2nd overall, and rode well at Rás Mumhan, though his 9th place on GC perhaps did not reflect that.
Overall, this makes for a very strong unit going into the Rás later this month. There are a number of potential general classification winners in the team while all of them, including the juniors, are good enough to win a stage.