Lacey: I never thought I’d win Rás the way I did

“The yellow jersey has missed the split, the yellow jersey has not responded and is still in the main bunch.”

The commissaire’s words rang through Sean Lacey’s head and reverberated among the team cars at last year’s Rás Mumhan to gasps of astonishment. Lacey, along with his team-mates, had tried everything for three days in a field of 180 riders but still trailed race leader Bram Imming of the Dutch Ruiter Dakkpallen Wieler team by a solitary second.

But, the early stages of that fourth and final leg will go down as the most enthralling in recent memory: “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Lacey. “You could never plan that. You’d never think the yellow jersey could miss a move of 30 riders where the riders who were second, third and fourth overall were in the move and the yellow jersey somehow missed it.