Sherlock steals yellow in West Kerry

Conor Murphy (Eurocycles) sprinted to a brilliant win in yesterday’s third stage of the Kerry Group Rás Mumhan as Ryan Sherlock (Iverk Produce/Carrick Wheelers) took custody of the yellow jersey after a gruelling 142-kilometre leg around West Kerry.

When Sherlock missed his chance of a stage win on Saturday’s summit finish on the Connor Pass, after being pipped on the line by Mark Dowling, many felt his chances of claiming glory were over for another year.

Dowling, son of legendary Irish boxer Mick, showed his class with the biggest win of his career, and with a star-studded DID Dunboyne team behind him, it was very much theirs to lose. Dowling held a two-second lead on Saturday night but at least 10 others were within a minute of him yesterday morning, with Sherlock leading the charge.

“I was very annoyed I didn’t get the stage on Saturday,” confessed Sherlock. “But it was extra motivation for yesterday and you have to ride this race aggressively. I attacked at the start and attacked at the end. You just have to ride a lot when you’re chasing the jersey and you’re going to take a lot of passengers with you. Everyone is in this race for various reasons so yesterday was about trying to get the yellow and it went to plan.”

After a few early moves, it looked like the decisive one was by Eurocycles’ rider Adam Armstrong and his solo attack on Valentia Island was maintained for upwards of 50km. But he was always being pursued by a strong group of eight riders featuring Sherlock, the aforementioned Murphy and Damian Shaw — but crucially, the yellow jersey had missed the split and sat over two minutes back with the peloton.

That breakaway group caught Armstrong, while seven more joined them for a 16-man front group fighting it out for the win.

“Everyone was pretty shattered towards the end,” Sherlock conceded. “I messed up the sprint coming in because I should have been first into the corner but I was third, I got within a half a bike of second which meant Colin Parry got a three second time bonus and I got a one second time bonus so instead of being six seconds up, I’m only four seconds up.”

Parry, riding for the Surrey League team is now second with Denis Bakker 44 seconds back in third. But with 115km of racing left in and around Killorglin, the race is anything but over.