Team Deeside Olympic

Desside Olympic Domestiques

4-day International Ras Mumhan

Friday 9th-Monday 12th April 2004

An Easter invitation to ride the 4-day International Ras Mumhan stage race in County Kerry, Ireland gave the club the opportunity to field a team of riders in this high profile event and gain valuable experience riding against top internationals, former professionals and Olympic Games competitors.

The team for the event consisted of Rob Partridge, Simon Oliver, Steve Lloyd, Andy Windsor and Andy Martin, with Paul Crabbe and Phil Windsor acting as team support.

The race itself consisted of a 60 mile road stage on Good Friday, a 100 mile Mountainous road stage around the famous ‘Ring of Kerry’ on Saturday, a 6 mile point to point time trial and town centre critirium on the Sunday and a final 60 Mile road stage on Easter Monday.

The file of 145 riders included the MG Power/ Recycling Team of Russell and Dean Downing, a Dataphonics Team led by welsh Commonwealth Games rider Anthony Malarchyk,, The Dutch BRC Kennemerland, the Irish National Team including last years Archer GP Winner David O’Loughlin and Olympian David McCann. The remainder of the field was made up of a number of other British and Irish Teams which included rider of the calibre of Irish legend Phil ‘Cass’ Cassidy and Paul Griffin and Eugene Morriarty, both of who had already competed in The Tour of Langkawi and Giro del Capo – Top UCI Stage races (Races ranked on the UCI Calendar are those ridden by Top Professional Teams)

The first stage of the race set the pattern for the rest of the weekend and developed in to a battle between Russell Downing of the MG Team and David O’Loughlin, of the Irish National Team.

Being the only British club team the Deeside Olympic riders performed tremendously well, with a strong team spirit developing and all five riders supporting each other throughout the race. Only a massive crash on the final stage robbed Andy Martin from gaining a well deserved top 20 overall result after some impressive riding, especially on the brutal 100 mile Ring of Kerry stage, where he made the front group despite repeated attacks from all of the big teams. On the same stage the other Deeside riders rode strongly to finish in a large group of 40 riders, 4 minutes behind the winners. As a measure of the difficulty of the terrain, riders were still finishing in considerable numbers over 45 minutes after the winner!

Rob Partridge finished 7th in the Under 23 category, which was particularly impressive after he suffered punctures on two stages, both at critical moments in the race. Rob was not the only rider to suffer from bad luck, with Andy Martin also puncturing and Simon suffering a nasty crash on the first stage.

After 4 days and over 250 miles of racing the final overall positions of the Deeside riders were;

61st Andy Martin
66th Rob Partridge
69th Stephen Lloyd
72nd Simon Oliver
83rd Andy Windsor

Thanks and acknowledgments for help on the trip….

Phil and Paul for all the driving and washing the bikes !
Rydymywyn Service Station, who provided the team van www.moldcarhire.co.uk
Irish Ferries for providing ferry crossings www.irishferries.com
John Hale and Keith Jones for ensuring we had the best kit in the race !!
Mr Mason, for leaving Rob out of the concrete boots for one last week…….

Thanks to Andrew Windsor for this report.

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