THE CYCLING SEASON is already under way as the sprinters continue to dominate in the Tour Down Under in South Australia.
Closer to home though, the four Irish riders currently competing in the professional peloton have been preparing themselves for the current season in various training camps around Europe.
The renaissance of Irish cycling continues as Nicolas Roche (AG2R-La Mondiale), Daniel Martin (Team Garmin-Cervélo), Philip Deignan (Team RadioShack) and new addition Matt Brammeier (HTC-HighRoad) will all be racing for ProTeams in the coming season. However, each of the four will be approaching the season with very different goals.
Roche will be aiming to improve his pedigree as a Grand Tour rider, having finished 15th in the Tour de France and seventh in the Vuelta a Espana last year.
He will be his team’s out and out leader for the Tour in July but he will wait to assess his form at the end of the summer before deciding whether to also ride the Vuelta or not.
A further goal for Roche in 2011 will be simply to win a race. For all his improvements as a General Classification rider in stage races, he is without a race victory since the 2009 Irish Road Race Championships.
Roche’s first cousin Daniel Martin was the most successful Irish professional cyclist last year as he won the Tour of Poland, a Pro Tour category race, which was Ireland’s first victory in a national Tour since Seán Kelly won the Tour de Suisse in 1990. The 24-year old also took victories in two one day races last year, the Tre Valli Varesine and the Japan Cup.
Martin took time over the winter to have an operation to sort out an allergy problem which had been affecting his ability to increase his heart rate sufficiently. He will most likely be the GC leader of Team Garmin-Cervélo at the Giro d’Italia, and with his breathing problems sorted he will be aiming to improve upon his 57th place in the same race last year.
Philip Deignan will be glad to see the back of 2010. It was a year in which he was constantly either ill or recovering from being ill. Consequently, he never looked like he was approaching peak form at any time during the year. Having won a stage and finished ninth in the 2009 Vuelta, Deignan will have been bitterly disappointed to have been denied the opportunity to build upon this success last year.
After his Cervélo Test Team folded last Autumn, Deignan was fortunate to be offered a place on Lance Armstrong’s Team RadioShack for the coming season. After his annus horribilis of 2010, Deignan will be looking to have a season free of maladies and may have one eye on finally making his Tour de France debut.
The newest member of the current crop of Irish cyclists at the top of the sport is the current Irish Road Race Champion, Matt Brammeier. The 25-year old, who spent the last two years with the An Post Seán Kelly team, started his cycling career as a member of the British cycling academy. It was there that he became friends with ace sprinter Mark Cavendish.
Having since declared for Ireland, Brammeier will be teaming up with Cavendish once more at HTC-HighRoad. Brammeier is aiming to become an integral part of the Manxman’s lead-out train for sprint finishes, and will be hoping to carry out this role at the Tour de France.
Goals
Although the season has already begun none of the Irish contingent are due start racing until February. Roche’s first race will be the Étoile de Bességes, a five-day French stage race starting on February 2nd. Brammeier is due to make his ProTeam debut at the Tour of Qatar which starts on February 6. Deignan will ride his first race for Team RadioShack in Spain at the one day Clásica de Almería on February 27th, while Martin’s start to the season will come later as he trains to build form after his off-season operation.
The last time Ireland had four cyclists at the top of the sport was 20 years ago when Seán Kelly, Martin Earley and brothers Stephen and Lawrence Roche all took part in the Tour de France.
To have four riders in the professional peloton once again is wonderful for Irish cycling fans and 2011 should prove to be an intriguing year.
Cillian Kelly writes about cycling at Irishpeloton.com
