The bravery award for last night’s Joe McNally League race goes to the person who made the call on who took the win in the A race. The Ardcath finish is always a killer and usually it’s not so close as this, but neither Ciarán nor Finbar was prepared to give up, fighting all the way to the line.

Who would you give it to?

First let’s see what the UCI say about finishes…

http://www.uci.ch/mm/Document/News/Rulesandregulation/16/80/73/1-GEN-20160501-EN_English.pdf

§ 7 Finish

Finish line

1.2.099 The finish line shall comprise a line of 4 cm in width, painted in black on a white strip 72 cm wide thus leaving 34 cm of white on each side of the black line.

1.2.100 The finish occurs at the instant that the tyre of the front wheel meets the vertical plane rising from the starting edge of the finishing line. To this end, the verdict of the photo finish shall be final.

Let’s ignore the first bit about what the line should look like 🙂

We don’t have the benefit of a proper side on photo so we can’t get accurate.

Remember: the rule isn’t whose wheel physically touches the line first, but rather it is about the very front of the wheel.

Whose wheel breaks that imaginary vertical line first?

Looking at that picture, Ciarán’s wheel (furthest from the camera) is furtherest over the line. But did he actually break that imaginary line first? We really can’t tell from that picture as both riders wheels have already broken the finish line. Maybe there are earlier pictures available but I haven’t seen them.

Oh well… but what we do have is a result… Ciarán is adjudged to have edged it by a breath of a shade of a whisker of a hair.

It wasn’t the only close call of the night. This is the battle for 5th spot…

B Race

No such ambiguity here, Adrian O’Sullivan broke clear on the final drag and won by a number of lengths.