Road race No.8 results update

The update is a little late this week folks so we are sorry about that, so back to Thursday evening last where we had club road race No.8 in the series. The route was starting on the Cloughjordan road, Cloughjordan, Borrisokane and finish just outside of Borrisokane a distance of 30km.

It was a beautiful evening for racing, you couldn’t have asked for nicer but there was a stiff breeze to fight against on the home stretch into Ardcroney which was going to make the race a bit tougher and also had a bearing on the finish but we’ll get to that in a minute. There were ten members out on the evening and it was great to see some members back out racing after not being able to race due to other commitments during the season.

The lads racing in Road Race 8. Missing from photo is John Caulfield who was gone on an early breakaway! 😉

We had three groups who were set off at different intervals but little did we know the events that were going to unfold on the route as the race progressed… The pace was full blast from the start and each group were working well together, the fast group eventually caught up with second group on the stretch of road that kicks up about 2km from the finish line in Ardcroney and from there there was a game of cat and mouse as no one wanted to be the leadout man into the stiff breeze that was there… Just before the finish at about 500m to go Liam Callaghan from about 4th position jumped and made his move… As the games had everyone looking at one another, pretty much everyone was back in the group together and there was no room on the road. At the second Liam jumped, both Owen Hynes who was just in front of Liam and Pat Bergin from a little further back tried to follow Liam’s wheel but unfortunately chose the very same line… Both had other riders on opposite sides of each other and with no room to manoeuvre they clashed and Owen hit the ground hard. Kevin Byrne, who was just behind Owen, seen him fall and tried to brake to avoid him but with the speed the group had been travelling at couldn’t avoid him and ended up colliding and got tossed out over the handle bars. We’re told by others following he landed like a cat, and very luckily was up with hardly a scratch and walked away virtually unscathed!! Very lucky indeed!! At this stage 5 lads had crossed the line with Liam just holding off Pat for the win and Eoin Woods taking third place, but Jan and Selina were wondering what had happened to the rest as they knew the groups had come together out the road and a few minutes had passed, then the news came back about the crash. They went to investigate and when they arrived on the scene Owen was still lying on the ground being attended by a first aider, Liam Morgan, and a couple of other good samaritans who just happened to be behind the lads as it happened and were tending to him by the roadside so we want to send out a huge thank you to these very kind people who gave assistance. Owen also thankfully is now ok and came away from it with just soft tissue damage but has a bad laceration to the elbow, bad road rash to the forearm and some lighter damage to his leg and shoulder. It’s still early days but he’s healing well! We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing him back out on the bike in the very near future. As they say folks “the joys of racing”, it’s all part and parcel of our sport but it’s not very nice when it happens and we hate to see it happening. We also wish to say thanks to the lads who were behind the crash for stopping up and not finishing their race to make sure their cycling comrades were okay, it was a very genuine and kind gesture lads. So for this reason as not everyone finished the race on the night we will not be allocating points to anyone and we will be re running this race route again in a few weeks time. We would like to thank Jan and Selina for timekeeping on the night and Conor for marshalling.