Ben Healy dominates Irish road race championships as his brilliant season rolls on

He’s had a stunning second season as a professional rider, including taking a stage win in the Giro d’Italia, and Ben Healy further underlined his class with a superb victory in Sunday’s Irish road race championships in Dungannon.

The 22-year-old EF Education-EasyPost rider finished a staggering four minutes and 12 seconds ahead of last year’s champion Rory Townsend (Bolton Equities Black Spoke), with Sam Bennett sprinting in for the bronze medal 5.59 back. He was one second ahead of Bora-hansgrohe team-mate Ryan Mullen and Rás Tailteann winner Dillon Corkery (CC Etupes).

It was Healy’s second time winning the championship, having done so with another long-distance solo move in 2020.

“The plan was not necessarily to go from so far out, but to be aggressive really early on and hope that they followed me,” said Healy, explaining he initially just wanted to soften up his rivals. “Because I didn’t really back myself to drop Ryan or Rory or Sam just in one go on these short punchy climbs. With a 25, 30 second effort, I’d say they’re just as strong as me.

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“But the repetition of the effort is definitely where it suits me best. So, yeah, I did that. And I managed to get away pretty early. And then I know I can do that sort of effort to the finish as well, and I backed myself to do that.”

Healy was part of the day’s key breakaway, joining with 14 other riders before this was then whittled down to a sextet comprising himself, Townsend, Bennett, Mullen, Corkery and Leo Doyle (ARBO-Headstart ON Fahrrad).

Having competed one larger loop of 33 kilometres, they raced on to the six laps of the 21.8-kilometre finishing circuit well clear of the next chasers. Healy launched a number of attacks on that course’s short, sharp climbs, and eventually struck out for home with approximately 100 kilometres remaining.

The other five riders kept tabs on him for quite a while, rolling through and controlling his advantage to between 20 and 40 seconds. It looked like he was going to be brought back, but things didn’t pan out that way.

“We were playing a good game, actually,” Bennett said. “We left Ben up the road, we were just trying to control him at 20 seconds, 30 seconds. We had plans of reeling him in. But he never came back.

“We just kind of played like that. And then all of a sudden our legs fell off before his!”

The 2021 champion Mullen had been doing a lot of the chasing and then with less than two laps remaining, Bennett and Townsend pushed ahead and made a big effort to reel in the leader. They brought him back to 22 seconds but Bennett subsequently cracked and slid backwards. Townsend kept driving on but he too faded, saying afterwards that he felt ill on the final lap.

He explained that he had taken some pickle juice towards the end to ward off cramps, but drank too much and paid the price.

Healy duly raced in way ahead, taking the coveted white and green champion’s jersey and earning the right to wear it in road races in the coming year.

Spanish-based Jamie Meehan (Brocar Ale) outsprinted Darren Rafferty (Hagens Berman Axeon) for the under-23 title, the duo racing in seventh and eighth in the combined event. Odhrán Doogan (Team Caldwell Cycles) took bronze.

Meanwhile, Lucy Benezet Minns (Tofauti Everyone Active Women) drew on the same superb solo effort she showed in Thursday’s time-trial to dominate the junior women’s road race on Sunday morning. She attacked almost immediately after the start of the 65 kilometre event and reached the finish line 7.36 ahead of silver medallist Aine Doherty (VC Glendale). Lucy Brown (Phoenix CC) was next home, 9.54 back.

“It feels really good,” she said. “I wanted to actually wait a little bit longer, wait until the end of the first lap but then because of the weather I thought it might be better to go early because you don’t want to hang about and get cold.”

On Saturday, Lara Gillespie won both the Elite and under-23 titles in the women’s road race. She outsprinted Caoimhe O’Brien (Belco Van Eyck) and Megan Armitage (Arkea Pro Cycling Team) for the gold medal.

Seth Dunwoody (Cannibal B Victorious) beat Liam O’Brien (Fermoy Cycling Club) and Cal Tutty (Dungarvan CC) in the junior men’s event.