Chases and Chains: A Long Weekend at the Tour of Omagh

The last of the series of summer stage races in Ulster may not be the most prestigious and renowned, and its A4-only format ensures that it does not rival in terms of competitive fielding the preceding three-days of Newry, Portaferry and Donegal; but the Tour of Omagh, being the only chance for 4^th Cats to test themselves in a stage racing environment, lived up to expectations as a tough and enduring event, complete with hard, rolling stages and its very own piece de resistance - a tough, selective ‘summit’ finish on the winding slopes of Sionfinn to conclude the race, and ultimately decide the fate of the coveted Yellow Jersey.

FAST AND FURIOUS: Friday 29^th July - St. Mary’s GAC, Killyclogher

“Do you want one?” grins Scott Daly, gesturing towards the bag of chips nestled in his lap, while I lean into the car enviously, chewing on a nondescript energy bar for what seems like an eternity.

“Hold on ‘til I finish this, then I’ll have one.”

I end up not taking up Scott’s kind offer, not due to the ill-effects that such a greasy indulgence may have on my performance in the impending race, but because I have been called over by a man with a camera and what turned out to be a stolen high-visibility vest (from one of the race organisers, mind) for the Dromara team photo.

Assembled in a rather typically ad-hoc fashion, our three strong team for the Tour of Omagh included myself, Scott’s brother Joshua, who swapped the yellow of Banbridge for the white of Dromara (a move only confirmed days previous) and the effervescent Mary Hunter, whose presence in the race I was only alerted to the Sunday before by Deek Hanna, and enabled us to compete in the team classification (not that any results were recorded for that particular competition).  

Being one of only two juniors in the race, Josh had come under scrutiny from the race organisers at sign on regarding his gears, resulting in a last minute rush for father, and directeur sportif for the weekend, Jim to limit his choice of gearing to that deemed legal for under 18s. I wasn’t slow in pointing out that because I had suffered the inconvenience caused by spinning my legs at a ferocious pace due to limited gearing the year before, that it was only right for him to do so as well, at least for this race.

A nice touch from the race organisers was the distribution of plastic Costcutter bags to each competitor, containing racing essentials such as numbers, safety pins and also sponsored items of energy bars and drinks, and what seemed like an endless supply of bottled water, which was given out at will by Omagh Wheelers members throughout the weekend.

Friday night stages of three day races tend to be flat and frighteningly fast affairs, and can also lend themselves to being ultimately decisive in the final classification (Aaron Baines’ winning move in this year’s Newry Three Day a notable example). At verging on 26 miles an hour, this was indeed a quick, if steady, night in the saddle, but in true Cat Four fashion, no breaks yielded any real significance - a promising group of eight including myself and Josh was swiftly reeled in by the vast apparition of Omagh riders, a twenty strong force that would prove to be a tricky hurdle to overcome for the remainder of the race.

A knuckle whitening last few corners offered a spectacular finish to an otherwise uneventful first night for Josh and me; unfortunately Mary could not say the same - a mechanical on the rough and potholed roads through some of the towns meant she lost five minutes: a disheartening end to what had been a business like first night’s racing.

“Job done,” I remarked to Josh while warming down immediately after the sprint finish, “Tomorrow” - the longest of the race with four categorised hills - “is where it will get painful.”

HANGING ON: Saturday 30^th - Stage Two, Seraghy Rd, circa 5pm

One kilometre from the top of the second stage’s penultimate climb, a twisting and irregular ascent outside Castlegore, I find myself in real difficulty for the first time in the Tour of Omagh. The leading group of riders, including yellow jersey Gary Jeffers of East Tyrone (who bears more than a striking resemblance to Ross Galway), pass as if I were standing still; the thought of accelerating to regain the nearest back wheel a bygone possibility - I fight with the bike, heaving as the gradient begins to bite again towards the summit. Team mate Josh passes calmly, legs ticking over like a metronome - a stark contrast to my staccato pedalling style, continuously up and down off the saddle, desperately searching for any rhythm. He waves at his back wheel, universal cycling language indicating me to grimly attach myself to his slipstream. I try, but weary of tipping over ‘into the red’ with nearly half the fifty mile stage and one more classified hill still to go, let his group drift up the road. As I pass near the top in a group of three I hear my parents from the side of the road shout, “It’s all down hill from here.”

Lovely. For a nine stone whippet like myself, that isn’t perhaps the greatest news I could have heard.

Only five kilometres earlier, the race couldn’t have been much more different. Although my stated aim of targeting the King of the Hills competition had gone out of the window on the first two climbs (due to a combination of bad positioning and ferocious pace setting), the legs felt good, and I demonstrated this by upping the pace as we approached the hardest of the day’s four hills. As I jumped out of the saddle to accelerate, Josh, somewhat inaudibly, shouted “Sit up, Ryan!” in warning to my impending fate.

As I answered the changes of pace and attacks at the beginning of the climb I began to wish I had heard him, legs searing with pain at the continuous effort.

Fortunately, as my small, straggling group crested the top of the hill, we were enveloped by a much larger bunch of fifteen or so, including a number of fresher legged Apollo riders who were caught behind a mechanical. While the two leading groups merged after a frantic and sweeping descent, my colleagues began a long drawn out discussion of how best to go about chasing down the leaders.

Confusion and subsequent frustration reigned as sporadic accelerations interrupted any organised attempt at a chase, and it took until the road flattened out when we finally sorted ourselves into the classic ‘through and off’, cutting the gap down immediately and considerably (Jim later informed me that 58 seconds was once the biggest gap, this soon became 30 or so in a matter of minutes) - but as the leading cars and riders vanished around every corner only to come back into view on the longer straights, our chase seemed futile, though in reality the seconds were invariably falling from their lead.

With the impending sprint point prolonging our agony as the lead group upped the pace to create a launching pad for Blue Jersey hopefuls, it was only until the foot of the final, albeit steady and shallow, climb that me and Davy Quinn and the other riders caught out earlier, could breathe a sigh of relief. To us, that was job done for the day.

But it wasn’t.

“Wee buns today,” Josh said nonchalantly, as I made my way puffing and panting to the front to prepare myself for the final dash to the line. For him, perhaps.

While in many respects the hectic sprint for the line mirrored that of the previous day, the smaller numbers in the group and sapped legs contained therein made for gaps to open that wouldn’t have opened otherwise. Josh took full advantage of this; buoyed on by my shouting he sprinted well to take fifth place in the stage, accelerating up the left hand side of the main road at such a rate that he was able to claim afterwards that, if the finish line had been twenty yards further on, he would have won. ‘If I had lunged at the end, like the others, I’d have probably won too,’ Josh remarked days later, in what was perhaps his tenth excuse to explain not winning the ‘blanket finish.’

 Mostly following wheels, I rode myself to a top fifteen position, to be awarded the same time as back to back winner Jeffers, with all to play for in what would the race’s decisive final day.

Mary, despite struggling on the earlier slopes as the front of the bunch mounted an increasingly high tempo, rallied to finish well with one of the Omagh girls -  a real battling performance on the race’s hardest day; a stage though physically challenging, was still not enough to create a race winning margin.

31 SECONDS: Sunday 31^st - Fintona, Stage Three Time Trial, 9am

If the first two stages of the Tour of Omagh had produced stalemate, the final day was designed to blow the race apart, the double stage format consisting of the two strikingly contrasting disciplines of time trialling and explosive climbing aiming to provide a worthy winner from the forty odd riders still locked together by the same time.

The early start (I couldn’t help musing that if this had been a 1980s edition of the Tour de France Bernard Hinault, with all his Breton defiance, would have led a start line protest - and probably punched any farmer that stepped too close) saw the first batch of riders off, of which Mary was one, greeted by damp and dreary conditions. It also had the Mallon car panicking over how best to find the seemingly tricky sign on location (in reality it was blatantly obvious - we had passed it earlier). Our confusion was not helped by one of the other competitors, who we had gestured to from the window, declare that ‘sign on is closed.’ Ignoring this piece of information, we followed his directions to find, along with the Dalys preparing Stevie Baines’ magnificent Cervelo TT machine, that sign on was indeed still open.

The six kilometre test (3.7 miles for those of you who watch the Tour Down Under with Ligget and Sherwen) involved flat, fast roads, aided by a considerable tailwind, but was punctuated by short sharp climbs and twisting turns on tight roads.

Needless to say, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.

While all the big, strong rouleurs lined up in brand new skin suits standing astride shiny specialist time trial bikes, I rode up to the start line with my basic clip-on aerobars and the knowledge that I am consistently poor in tests against the clock. Nevertheless, the brevity of such a time trial gave me some glimpse of hope that I could at least limit my losses.

This hope didn’t last long - hampered by the lack of clarity from the specified marshal, and by my own inability to watch any of the riders start before me, I almost missed the left hand turn fifty metres into the race, much to the later amusement of the Daly family (though I maintained that the line I took was the best one into that corner). Aiming for around the nine minute mark that Mary had informed me she clocked earlier, I was surprised to cross the line in 8 minutes 48 seconds, and relieved that the most dreaded part of the weekend was over.

Riding back to the start line into a boisterous headwind as part of an extremely relaxed warm down, I arrived just in time to witness Josh begin, what was in our minds, his first real attempt at mounting a challenge for the overall title.

Having ignored the offer of wearing my Giro aero helmet as his start time loomed ever nearer, Josh confidently limbered up to the line on the gleaming low profile machine, a bike he had only previously warmed up on, but was upbeat about the positive effects it would have on this extremely fast course.

But just as the starter began to count down the final seconds to the start, Josh back-pedalled to align his feet into a preferred starting position, only for the chain to inevitably come off. With Jim running over to his son’s aid, the Dromara guest rider stepped off the bike, thinking, in true club time trialling etiquette, that his start time would be moved to the back of the order. But this was a stage race, and he was told, much to his furore, that the clock was still running and would count towards his time. After another struggle with the petulant chain, Josh, amidst a wave of expletives, jumped aboard his borrowed bike and set off, thirty one seconds after his start time, steam pouring from his ears as he disappeared up the road.

*  *  *

The finish of the time trial, the Halfway House, also provided as the rest stop for the peloton as we waited for the beginning of the final stage with a brilliantly laid on banquet of breakfast foods, from cereal to scones, and of course, tea.

Conversation ranged from the new ’chain-gate’ to Josh’s infamously sober night at the Banbridge Academy formal (“my worst night ever” he sighed), and my explanation of why Contador is guilty of doping (much to the bemusement of Josh - he still wears a Livestong band).

When the results from the morning’s time trial were pinned on the pub‘s door, there was little surprise - I was happy enough with my 59^th placing (the best I could have hoped for), while Josh’s mid bunch finish at 38^th (still half a minute ahead of me, mind) was no consolation to our realisation that if it hadn’t been for the now fabled ‘31 seconds’ he would have finished fifth in the time trial, setting himself up nicely for the afternoon. Damn.

CRUNCH TIME: Fintona - Sionfinn (Fimemiletown Mountain)

The final, Sunday afternoon stage of the Tour of Omagh presented two major difficulties to overcome - one was the challenging, finishing climb to Fivemiletown Mountain, a twisting, sinuous four kilometre climb to a summit flanked by vast, newly constructed windmills. A fast run in ends abruptly with a sharp left hand turn that ramps up immediately to begin the climb with its sharpest gradient. This steep section is followed by a brief respite before the climb is abandoned to the contours of nature; the gradient constantly changing as you wind your way up the narrow road to the top, and the finish of the Tour of Omagh.

However, the first, and perhaps more strenuous, challenge facing me at the start in Fintona was dispatching Josh from the confines of his car to warm up. Justifiably disgruntled after his earlier chain debacle; the prospect of another stage, and a potential soaking (it had begun to rain) up the final climb did not seem particularly endearing to him at the time. As Mary and I, wary of the need to keep the legs spinning before the final stage, warmed up around the town; Josh reclined in the front seat listening to some mellow Top 40 drivel that I can’t quite recall.

Finally emerging from the warmth of the car some twenty minutes before the roll out, he vowed (in Andy Schleck-esque fashion, I noted) to ‘make everyone else hurt.’ But like the tame Schleck brothers, that threat didn’t quite materialise. Not that we didn’t give it a go, however.

In archetypal end-of-race style, the fourth stage began in quite benign fashion; the only point of interest in the opening miles being the roaming photographer on the motorbike, for whom me and Mary were only too happy to pose (well, I was anyway). However, the need to keep focused was perfectly illustrated by a flying piece of chip wrapper that managed to entangle itself in my left pedal half way through the stage. Thanking God that it wasn’t wrapped in my spokes, I experimentally rotated the pedals to see the litter fly towards the back of the bunch. “That was lucky,” said the obviously relieved rider next to me - I couldn’t have agreed more.

The procession-like racing style abruptly ended as the final climb approached. The tightly packed peloton exploded to pieces as the yellow and blue jerseys of Warnock and Jeffers stormed up the road looking to make the decisive break of the race before the punishing slopes of the Sionfinn. As the attacks continued from the front of the bunch, the break swelled to a group of eight, including the two Dromara jerseys of Mallon and Daly.

The danger of such a group escaping and deciding the stage (and the overall rankings) was duly noted within the main pack, and the subsequent chase (mostly by Bob Talbot of Harps CC as I was to find out at the following week’s Hilly events) brought everything together by the foot of the dreaded mountain.

However, as the road steepened fiercely, the elastic snapped once again for good, as the lead group of around ten finally formed from the incessant attacking, leaving the rest to struggle wilfully up to the finish.

With all but the very best deep into the ‘red zone’, the race became a process of survival, and in the best instances, a fight to find any discernable rhythm. After flailing due to the initial attacks and lack of recovery time from the earlier break, I began to create a good tempo as the climb progressed (leaving a few riders in my wake, too) and closed in on Josh, who though reacting better to the first accelerations, was beginning to suffer, mimicking my earlier ‘rocking’ riding style, eyes fixed on the narrow road ahead of him.

Passing the parents, and breathlessly asking them how far there was to go (“500 metres, keep going!” the reply) gave me hope; though my appreciation of distance seemed to have deserted me - by the time I crossed the line, seconds after Josh and legs completely searing with pain, it may well have been five miles.

Not long after, Mary, who had put in a sublime performance throughout the stage and particularly up the last hill, joined us 200 yards down from the finish line, with its wide, expansive views of the county below, that indicated the Tour of Omagh, after a long  and hard fought weekend, was finally over.

“That was tough enough…”

The team would like to thank those who helped throughout the weekend, particularly Jim Daly, who took on the role of Directeur Sportif in the car, and also my parents for their support, and photos and videos.

We also have to thank Omagh Wheelers for the great event they put on and their terrific organisational skills; and as Mary said, hopefully it will encourage others in the club to participate in such a race. And cheers to Josh for riding for Dromara as a guest - just a pity that chain came off!