Des Hanlon Memorial

B-race Them’s hard men in this part of the country and today’s 90 mile hilly course was always going to be a serious test. John Lally got himself into a five man break after two miles, and these stayed clear up to the sixty mile mark when they were joined by five more. John continued to work with this break until ‘his lights blew’ with twenty miles to go. His form was good but didn’t quite have a 90 mile race in his legs just yet, but its early days! You just cant seem to keep him off Peter Puirfield’s photo page.

C/Vets/Jun -race This race was a severe 67 miles of racing, and sure enough when a ten man break formed on lap 1, Anto was in it. That is until half of them, incl Anto, crashed on the decent. Anto, bruised & battered, remounted (hopefully on his own bike) and rejoined the race. One by one the break was reeled in by a group of chasers that incl Pat Halpin. This was Pat’s kind of course……plenty of hills, and such was the severity of the course that many riders didn’t finish. The third and fourth place riders on the road were just caught on the run to the line by Pat’s group, with Pat finishing 11th(4th Vet). This was a day when Pat mixed it with the best of them, an excellent performance.

C/Vets/Jun -race Not much to report results wise, except the recently returned to racing, John Condon, was in good form and was in the break for some time. This in contrast to Sundays race was run over a very fast course. Sean had been wondering if anyone else was thinking that the speed was high when Lawrence Roche remarked about the speed of the race. As Sean says ‘When an ex-pro says its fast……it’s fast”