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2013
The announcement further raises the quality
of this year’s lineup, with many strong squads queuing to take part. Race director Tony Campbell and his team
had previously confirmed fourteen overseas teams for the 2.2 world-ranked race.
Today’s news sees the addition of the Synergy Baku, the Polygon Sweet Nice and
the Astellas Oncology squads to the start list, and means that the race will be
even more competitive as a result. The Synergy Baku team comes from Azerbaijan
but has an Irish flavour to it, with Connor McConvey as a rider, former Rás
winner David McCann as a rider and directeur sportif, and David McQuaid as its
technical director. McConvey will be part of the team for the
An Post Rás, and will hope to improve on his previous showings in the race. He
was fourth in 2010 and seventh last year, and this season showed strong form by
netting second on a stage and fifth overall in the Tour of Thailand. Also in the lineup is the Namibian Dan
Craven, who won the opening stage and led the race for three days in 2010, plus
the German sprinter Christoph Schweizer, the climber/GC rider David Clarke and
the Russian all rounder Kirill Pozdnyakov. However the latter crashed hard last
Saturday and is not certain for the An Post Rás. The team has made his debut this season as
a Continental squad, and has made an impact right away; it is currently a
superb second in the UCI Asia Tour rankings. It will ride the Tour of
Azerbaijan, Flèche du Sud and the Lincoln GP as part of its build-up to the
race. “We are coming with a full team of GC
contenders,” said McQuaid, laying out the team’s ambitions. “Any of them could
have yellow in Skerries. They are good enough and majority of the team has
experience in the Rás.” While the Polygon Sweet Nice team also has
overseas sponsors and is based abroad, this year’s squad is registered in
Ireland as a Continental squad and will likely feature five riders from this
country. Irish hillclimb champion and former best
county rider Ryan Sherlock will be joined by former Irish junior road race
champion Charles Prendergast, Mark Downling, Stephen Halpin and Daniel
Clifford. “The team is currently racing in the five
day Tour de Azerbaijan as preparation,” Sherlock said this week. “Already this
season, parts of the team have raced in the Tour de Taiwan and Tour of the
Philippines.” He confirmed that he will be the protected
general classification rider in the 2.2-ranked event. “All riders will be
focused on stage results with Daniel Clifford as our main sprinter,” he added. Irish national hill climb championship
runner-up Anthony Walsh is also on the team, as are Ryan Aitcheson, a past
fourth-place finisher in the Canadian road race championships, and Matt Green,
who was fourth in the Wevigem road race. “The team goal for the race is a top 10
overall for either Coulton Hartrich or Jake Rytlewski and to make an impact on
stages with aggressive racing,” said the manager Andrew Frey. Race director Tony Campbell anticipates a
huge battle this month. “There’s a very good standard of teams for this year’s
race and the An Post Rás will be hugely competitive as a result,” he said. “It
is very hard to predict a winner, and this will add to the importance of
tactics and playing things just right over the course of what will be a very
tough week.” The race will feature 33 categorised
climbs, of which four are gruelling category one mountains and twelve are
category two ascents.
For more information contact Tony Campbell tonycampbell@anpostras.com Eddie Dawson eddiedawson@anpostras.com |
