McCann looks for Rás lift in Wicklow mountains
McCann, who won the title in 2004, clung on to the race leader’s yellow jersey yesterday with the two-time winner, Chris Newton (Stena Rapha), breathing down his neck all the way.
Newton, a former world track champion who holds Olympic silver and bronze medals beat McCann for the stage win into Lisdoonvarna on Tuesday but the Belfast man turned the tables in Tralee on Wednesday when he ended up on equal time with Newton at the top of the general classification sheet and took the yellow jersey from crash victim Mark Cassidy (An Post/Sean Kelly) on better placings.
They were still on equal time at the end of yesterday’s fifth stage to Skibbereen where Simon Richardson (Plowman Craven) won the stage after David O’Loughlin (Pezula Racing) punctured out of a two-man break four kilometres from the finish.
They had been part of a four-man break — Kit Gilham (Britain Kinesis) and Patrick Kos (Netherlands) were the others involved — who escaped from the field and were 4 mins 17 secs clear at Moll’s Gap, the first of the two Cat 1 climbs. Gilham mopped up the mountains points to claim the pink jersey and O’Loughlin, the Irish road race champion with a place in the Olympic track programme still in the balance, was left battling it out with Richardson.
All the time the peloton, was closing down but the two leaders still had over three minutes on them at Glengarriff where Maureen O’Hara was on the roadside to wave them on — O’Loughlin comes from Cong where the film, “The Quiet Man,” was shot.
They still had plenty in hand when O’Loughlin punctured and Richardson was left on his own. O’Loughlin did not quit and chased him all the way to the line where he was given the same time.
“I drilled it hard as soon as I got the bike change,” O’Loughlin said. “I was closing on him but I just did not have enough road at the end.”
Still in the yellow jersey David McCann lavished praise on his team members at the end of the stage but he said he felt bad for David O’Loughlin.
“I feel he would have won the stage,” he said. “It was most unfortunate. But, for my own part, I have to thank the other members of my team.”
He said it was now a matter of keeping it all together on today’s stage which takes the peloton from Skibbereen to Clonmel via Drimoleague, Dunmanway, Coachford, Donoughmore, Mallow, Doneraile and Mitchelstown.
“It’s more about not losing it than not winning it,” he said. “Saturday’s stage will probably decide this race and those are the hills where I have won the Ras before.”
It was an exciting stage victory for Simon Richardson who was the raceleader on the road for a long time.
“It was super hard because of the wind which almost nullified the climbs themselves,” he said. “I knew that — with the time gaps we had — I was possibly looking at yellow at the end of today, so I gave it everything.
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