Two days before the men\u2019s 1987 World Championships Road Race, Ireland\u2019s team rode the 12km circuit, located just to the southwest of the Austrian city of Villach, for the first time. Ireland had sent five riders to Austria for the race \u2013 Stephen Roche, Sean Kelly, Martin Earley, Paul Kimmage and Alan McCormack \u2013 to take on the might of the Belgian, Dutch and Italian squads, all of which boasted 12 or more riders.<\/p>\n
The common consensus was that the circuit best suited the sprinters in the peloton, but as he made his way around the route in 30\u00b0C heat, Roche thought otherwise. There were two climbs and although they were short \u2013 3km and 2km respectively \u2013 and not particularly steep, the riders would have to ride them 23 times each over the course of the 276km race.<\/p>\n
\u2018I rode around the circuit once and thought, \u201cWow, this isn\u2019t for a sprinter,\u201d\u2019 said Roche, looking back at the race many years later. \u2018Four or five times around, yes, but 23 times? No, it\u2019s impossible for a sprinter.\u2019<\/p>\n
Roche had endured a difficult run-in to the Worlds. The Tour de France had finished only six weeks before, and while the Irishman had come out of that race victorious, he was also weary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two days before the men\u2019s 1987 World Championships Road Race, Ireland\u2019s team rode the 12km circuit, located just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1191963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":["post-1191962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117231531236133768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1191963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}