Race director for Irish National Championships explains how men’s and women’s races came into conflict

Yesterday we reported how riders taking part in last weekend’s Irish national women's road race were told to pull aside to allow the men’s race to pass. The race director for the event has now explained how the unfortunate situation came about.

The winner of the women’s race, Lydia Boylan, said that it had always seemed likely that they would be caught by the men’s race despite a 17km head start as there had significantly more riders in the men’s race.

"Having such a big men's bunch and conversely such a small women's bunch, I think they probably over-estimated the speed of the women's group and thought that it wouldn't catch."

Writing on Facebook, race director Derek Webb, said: “Overall the weekend was a success. Not sure how things are done in the UK, but in Ireland we don't have road closures, so we submitted a traffic management plan months ago to the police and council.

“73 per cent of the entrants didn’t register until five days before the event, so I don’t know my field sizes until four days before, making it impossible to make last minute changes to any traffic plans.”

“We paid the police the overtime etc, so to put the ladies out even half an hour earlier is a big ask with 72 hours’ notice. We would have noted in our plan submitted to the council the times we would be on the course and we had to be finished by a certain time also.

Webb said he knew it would be tight when only 34 women signed on and said this was compounded by tactical racing which meant that the pace suffered.

“Damn all I can do as a race director if I’ve to work on a 20km circuit to a certain timeframe with two uneven groups of riders. Either way, the race staff stopped the race in a safe and efficient manner and to be fair I spoke to some of the ladies within the bunch and their attitude has been super, totally understand the situation and shit happens.

“I for one will definitely sit down with any group to see how an event like this doesn't happen again and we turn the negative into a positive for everyone's benefit.”