Rás Mumhan 2012

Chips Lovell

I see Paidi O'Brien took the first stage today.

http://www.rasmumhan.com/?p=883

Fiona Cooke from Marble City was providing great Twitter coverage from the cavalcade.

http://twitter.com/fi_cooke

ROK ON

Brilliant finish in the fog on the top of Conor Pass today. Three riders caught the two leaders on the climb.

Mark Dowling of Dunboyne beat Ryan Sherlock of Carrick by what apeared to by a bike length. A guy from Surrey in the UK rolled over in third. The pace they took the line was awesome considering that the gradient up to that point is about 8% for the best part of the final km.

Savage stuff.

killalanerr

it was a very interesting stage with the brake at allmost 3min it took some ride to get them back
it was savage to see Ryan zoom up the pass their is still a lot of raceing to be done in this race yet

Diarmuid

The job the DID lads did in the 20k to the bottom of Conor pass was impressive. It was a struggle to hang on. Fair play to Dowling for finishing off the job and hard luck on Ryan. Tomorrow's another day and another opportunity to get that win.

rash

According to strava Ryan did the pass in 14.25, think that's about 2 min faster than last year. Avg speed of over 23kph. Pretty impressive, can't see that kom being beaten... Not by me anyway, it took me 28min in the etape.

Didn't hang around to see the finish, pretty cold up there and the reward of a hot shower was too tempting

killalanerr

it was a long hard day Sherlock now yellow

rash

Hope Ryan holds on today. There are live updates on rasmumhan.com from the Orwell team car.

http://www.rasmumhan.com/?page_igd=924

Inquitus

rash wrote: »

Hope Ryan holds on today. There are live updates on rasmumhan.com from the Orwell team car.

http://www.rasmumhan.com/?page_igd=924

Seems Ryans been caught out by a break with 3rd placed rider in it, he has 44 secs in hand, gap currently well over a minute (edit 78secs) on the final lap, not looking good, shame.

buffalo

StickyBottle have a full report on the final stage at http://www.stickybottle.com/races-results/with-photos-unaware-rival-was-in-break/

Gutted for Sherlock. I was in Kerry at the weekend, and the weather for that last stage was ferocious. I think most stages were pretty windy, but I got saturated in a five second dash to the car on Monday morning. A serious amount of kudos to everyone taking part, and especially to those who finished the race, or even just made it to the last day.

Any race report from Diarmuid - how was it overall?

rash

Gutted for Ryan too. To come 2nd in the Queen stage 3 years running and then to lose the yellow jersey in the way it happened must to very frustrating.

Wonder why he didn't get any support from the bunch in his pursuit, are some riders jealous the he is more or less a full time rider, or perhaps jealous that he rode for Giant Asia last year in what was his 2nd year racing??

Hope he looks at the positives from the race, and wish him the best of luck in the Ras in May.

Hope he's back for the Ras Mumhan next year as he's been the most consistent rider over the last 3 yrs.

Thanks to Fiona Cooke for her race updates, they were A1

elduggo

rash wrote: »

Wonder why he didn't get any support from the bunch in his pursuit, are some riders jealous the he is more or less a full time rider, or perhaps jealous that he rode for Giant Asia last year in what was his 2nd year racing??

why the suspicion? I would have thought the onus would be on the yellow jersey to do the work. You see it all the time in pro races.

Not sure why the fact that people on other teams didn't help him out has to be borne of some sinister motives.

Tough I know but thats racing.

rash

Fair point, I know jack about racing, but from the stickybottle report it sounds like he asked for help, I would have expected a few at least to help out in some way, to only get 1 seemed a bit odd to me, but then again at the end of a hard 4 days and the conditions perhaps others were on the limit.

Bikengolfer

It is not jealousy or sinister its bike racing. If you haven't any team mates left you need friends otherwise your on your own.

ROK ON

rash wrote: »

Fair point, I know jack about racing, but from the stickybottle report it sounds like he asked for help, I would have expected a few at least to help out in some way, to only get 1 seemed a bit odd to me, but then again at the end of a hard 4 days and the conditions perhaps others were on the limit.

The weather was poor, and the guy who did a few turns to drive back is from Killorglin afaik, so he had some incentive to do well under a home crowd. For everyone else, what was in it for them?

Why would you willingly kill yourself for nothing, when all you want to do at that stage is finish, have a shower and some food?

Thats sport. He was probably the strongest across the 4 days racing, but sometimes thats not enough.

As a certain Munster rugby player would say - put it in the bitterbank and withdraw it in the future when you need that extra bit of motivation.

DirkVoodoo

Thanks to Fiona for the great coverage, even from 17,000km away I almost felt like I was sitting on Aidan's wheel (or struggling to).

Whenever I click on Sticky Bottle I see Ryan's name mentioned at the business end of whatever race is on, not a great result overall but I'm sure he must take encouragement ahead of the Ras for a good county performance and maybe a prize or a stage win. He may have missed the move, but I thought his response was courageous and commendable, the kind "never say die" attitude that racing is all about.

12 sprocket

Siobhan Horgan/ Dervan some of you might have have noticed that Siobhan Horgan who is a professional woman cycling, with a french team, finished in the front groups on most of the stages..

What a great performance, Shows the standard of womens international racing!

seve65

Ryans tasty kom and a couple of other speedy ascents up on strava now for the pass:
http://app.strava.com/rides/6357724#120429536

rochefan

12 sprocket wrote: »

Siobhan Horgan/ Dervan some of you might have have noticed that Siobhan Horgan who is a professional woman cycling, with a french team, finished in the front groups on most of the stages..

What a great performance, Shows the standard of womens international racing!

Totally agree. It was by far the best performance of the weekend. She struggled a bit on the first day but on the other days she was in the front group, amazing

buffalo

Ryan has a post up on the last stage - http://ryansherlock.blogspot.com/2012/04/2012-ras-mumhan-part-3.html (and earlier reports available). Really feel his pain reading it.