O’Brien has the right credentials

Páidí O’Brien is one of the hot favourites to win the final major stage race of the domestic cycling season, the Suir Valley 3-Day, which starts in Clonmel today and runs until Monday afternoon.

The Corkman, who will lead the Osbourne Meats/Edge Sports Shop team is a former stage winner, having beaten Sam Bennett on the opening day last year and eventually finished fourth overall.

Bennett, who has since taken the professional ranks by storm, is not eligible to ride this year — while the team who took three of the four stages last year, the An Post Chain Reaction team, are not back, so it should be a very open and exciting race.

Amongst those likely to contend in the 150+ rider field are former Kerry Group Rás Mumhan winners, Damien Shaw (Aquablue) and Mark Dowling (Cycling Leinster) while Paddy Clarke (Liquidworx-Fitscience) and UCD’s Anthony Walsh should push for stage wins.

There are plenty of jerseys on offer over the four stages and as well as the usual yellow (overall), polka dot (mountains), green (points), and pink (hot spot) jerseys, there’s the blue jersey for the best placed A2 rider on General Classification and the red jersey for the best A3 rider.

For the third year running, there’s a jersey for the most aggressive rider in memory of the late Paul Healion.

The stages themselves are slightly changed from last year, but the race is no less difficult.

Today’s opener starts in Clonmel and finishes in Cahir but not before riders tackle 115 kilometres of racing over three categorised climbs; two of those come in the latter half of the stage and should blow the race to pieces.

Tomorrow’s second stage is a little easier, and shorter, but the 92 kilometre trek, again starting and finishing in Clonmel is a fast one and riders are expected back into the town in less than two hours.

Tomorrow night sees the riders tackle a criterium race around Clonmel, a 2.1 kilometre circuit that riders will race around for around 50 minutes (45 minutes and three laps).

This is one for the fast men and should suit the likes of O’Brien, Jason Prendergast (Liquidworx-Fitscience) and Ken Tobin (Cycling Leinster).

The final stage will be a real showdown and features a category one summit finish atop ‘The Nire’. There are also two category two climbs before it; the Vee and ‘Colligan’.

Racing starts in Clonmel at 1pm today and concludes on Monday around 2pm.