Iain Dyer, director of high performance at Cycling Ireland, has set out the rationale behind sending a road team to the Worlds but not the Europeans (Photo: Fennell Photography)
They say you can’t argue with a winner, and Team Ireland’s high performance record on the road has very much been a winner over the past 12 months. Ben Healy won bronze in the elite road race at the Worlds in Rwanda last September.
A week later, David Gaffney and Conor Murphy took bronze and silver in the junior road race and TT at the Europeans in France, with Adam Rafferty winning the bronze in the U23 TT.
Yet, this year, Cycling Ireland has decided against sending any Irish team back to the Europeans; this time being held on climbers’ terrain in Slovenia.
Instead, all resources will be focussed on the Worlds in Montreal, Canada. So why do that, especially when the Worlds – on a very hilly course – will be even more competitive than the Europeans?
Iain Dyer, Cycling Ireland’s director of high performance, explains the rationale. And he has warned riders risk not being selected if they are not available in plenty of time. There is no place for last minute arrivals, he says.
“Obviously the pinnacle event in the calendar is the UCI Road World Championships, and where possible we’d like to support our riders working towards that,” Dyer explained.
“Rwanda was a bit of an exceptional case last year, so in seeking out an alternative we settled on the UEC European Championships for other categories.
“But, as we saw, they were also pretty demanding courses and in addition, splitting our resources was very challenging for us (while) still maintaining our standards for delivering a well-supported event.
“This year looks similar in the sense that both the Montreal and Slovenian courses look very demanding and attritional once again.
“But, as they follow on from one another, splitting ourselves in two in order to deliver two championships back-to-back stretches our capabilities too far to support everyone to the high standards we expect of ourselves.
“Therefore, we have come to the conclusion to solely focus on the Worlds this year. We also feel comfortable that anyone that has the capability to go well at the Euros will clearly be in the same position for the Worlds, so let’s focus on that.
“It’s definitely a concern that there’s still a number of good races in Europe leading right up to Montreal’s first day of racing. (Our) own team travel kicking in from September 17th in waves.
“It’s important that junior and U23 riders understand the need to be available for Dublin group travel from this date and work with us, and their teams, to carve out availability should they be selected.
“Availability could affect selection for sure if teams aren’t releasing riders at a time we consider appropriate for performing. We’re not putting in this effort to be second best through someone arriving just in time.”