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.

“We didn’t hesitate, we just basically said, ‘this is it’, grabbed the bull by the horns and went for it.”

For 10 years he’d been trying to win Rás Mumhan, but never thought he’d win it the way he did.

“I lost a stage-race, the Suir Valley 3-Day to Ciarán Power by one second back in 2009 and I remember thinking, I don’t want to lose another stage race like that so the plan was to mind ourselves for the first bit and be aggressive for the small laps around the town [10 short laps of Killorglin always conclude the race].

“It obviously didn’t happen like that and we won because my team-mates reacted so fast. There was no hesitation, we had this window, maybe a 30-second window where we all got together and rode very hard, opened up the gap, and maintained it.”

Lacey, 29, from Tralee but living in Croom and working in CIT as a Maths lecturer is one of the most prolific riders on the domestic scene and, traditionally, hits the start of the season hard.

Just last month he collected his fourth Lacey Cup (named after his granduncle) in-a-row and such is his prowess in the peloton that the question had to be asked, what’s the secret? “There is none,” he deadpans. “Just training. Training, training, training.

“I’d be leaving my house between five and half five in the morning so I’m down in Cork for work in an hour and then I go training for two hours before lecturing at nine.

His racks up a whopping 360 miles a week in winter. But he’s not complaining.

“You just get on with it. When you have number one on your back as the defending champion, you are the guy who’s going to be watched and everyone will keep a close eye on you.

“That’s what people expect so there’s no point giving out or anything. You just ride the race and do what you can.”

Lacey will be riding as part of the Dan Morrissey/Speedy Spokes team, only formed three years ago but already the most feared in the country. His team-mate Tim Barry won in 2010, so can they make it a three-in-a-row?

“I’m very fortunate to have won once so I’m happy with that. I’ll be going in to get it again. I know it’s going to be hard. You look at that start-list and you can say, there’s maybe 10 or 20 potential winners there. But I’m looking forward to it.”