I couldn’t believe the amount of people calling my name at the startline

Stage 2 – Kanturk to Sneem

When it comes to jerseys, there is a hierarchyin cycling. National championship jerseys take precedence over your team kit, European champions take precedence over nationals and the world champion’s bands are over Europeans.

On a stage race, however, the classification jerseys rule, with the yellow of race leader trumping all others. The U-23 leader’s white jersey is often next, followed by the green of points leader, the mountains classification, stage winner and the intermediate sprint classification if there is one.

As only one person can wear any of these at a time, if you finish in the top two on the opening day of a stage race you are likely to go into either green or yellow. Yesterday the guy who took third also amassed the most points in the Irish Independent King of the Mountains classification and took that jersey so I donned the red jersey of ‘stage winner’ this morning by virtue of finishing fourth yesterday.

I also had a new haircut, courtesy of my cousin Eolann, from the Barber Chop in Kanturk, who visited the team hotel last night and cut not only my hair but my room-mate Dean’s [Harvey] as well. In fairness, Dean didn’t really have much choice in the matter as Eolann started shea ring him before he had time to protest.

While my new haircut and red jersey stood out from the rest of my team-mates in Kanturk this morning, I found myself standing out for another reason. For about 20 minutes, I was the only one going around in my socks, as I couldn’t find my cycling shoes. With the start brought forward a quarter of an hour because of a funeral in the town, panic was setting in. I was all set to send my cousin back to Mallow on a motorbike to see if I’d left them under the bed in the hotel until I found them just ten minutes before the off, exactly where I’d absent-mindedly dumped them earlier – under the back seat of the team car.

Although I’m from Banteer, I went to secondary school in Coláiste Treasa, Kanturk and spent most of my youth in today’s start town and it felt like the whole place was out to cheer me on today.

There were banners, posters, bunting, signs, shop window displays everywhere. I couldn’t believe the amount of people calling my name. Eddie Dunbar even arrived in his Jayco-Alula kit, alongside his girlfriend and my former school friend Niamh. I asked him if he wanted to swap jerseys for a day and take my place but reckoned everyone would know it wasn’t me when he started ripping the legs off everyone from the flag. Early on the stage, my team-mate Odhran [Doogan] crashed when someone shut the door on him as he was trying to go up the left to float into one of the early moves. He got up though and seems OK now.

I attacked and went clear in a group of about 20 lads, including three teammates, after about 100km. If we had ridden together we would have stayed away for sure but when people see a few Irish jerseys in the group they just don’t want to ride.

Liam Crowley did 5km on the front on the windswept first-category Ballaghasheen, putting everyone in the gutter bar us and towards the top I kicked and went clear again with Dean, Liam O’Brien and five or six others.

Again, no one wanted to ride with us and about 20 more came across. With no real cohesion, though, the attacks started flying. It was like a junior race.

After we crested Coomakista, with about 40km to go, I told Liam to try and follow the moves. I only had the words out of my mouth when he went clear with Conn McDunphy. I followed a Chinese guy later but couldn’t ride with him as I had Liam up the road. He didn’t understand the Banteer dialect though and was getting angrier and angrier as I sat on in the hope he’d drag me across the gap.

Back in the chase group shortly after, all eyes were on me but I was content to have Liam up the road. One of the English guys started poking the bear. “What’s the story mate?” “What?”

“You look tired.”

I thought I recognised him from last year. “You know well I don’t get tired boy!” I answered. “You learnt that lesson last year. Five days of racing and I put twoand-a-half minutes into you!”

He wasn’t too impressed, but at least he shut up. Up ahead, the experiencedtook advantage of Liam’ s strength and youthful exuberance, sitting on him for the last couple of kilometres before winning the sprint for stage victory.

George Peden from England jumped away from our group with 2km to go and everyone looked at me. I won the sprint for fifth and was on the podium for a jersey swap again after the stage, this time as new leader of the points classification.

Liam is now second overall, level on time with new race leader Dom Jackson of the British Foran team, and also leads the U-23 classification so we still have a few cards to play tomorrow.

Read Dillon Corkery’s Rás Tailteann diary exclusively in the Irish Independent this week. Stage 3 of the five-day race is from Kenmare to Cahir