Travelling home now from a brilliant weekend in Perth for the YTOS. We arrived on Friday and done a pre race ride on Friday afternoon at the race HQ.

The prolouge was took place on Sat morning, the course was short (1mile) but tough with a hill and a U-turn. I didn’t have the best ride and finished 40th.

On sat afternoon we had stage1, the first road stage on a very hilly and tough circuit. The wind was really strong and this split the field. The race was very hard and 3 riders broke away about halfway through the race and they stayed away until the finish. There was a reduced bunch as we came to the finish as lots of people got dropped due to the fast pace. I didn’t have much legs left for the bunch sprint, I finished 26th.

On Sunday morning, the TTT stage2 was suppose to take place in the morning but due to the wind the race organisers decided to move it to the afternoon snd make the stage3 road race in the morning. Stage2 was a road race on a rolling circuit but not as hard as yesterday. The wind played a huge factor making position very important and splitting the bunch to pieces. My teammate was in the breakaway and had as advantage on the bunch. With 3 laps to go there was a crash from a rider in the bunch, this was a very bad crash and the race was neutralised until we got around to the finish of the lap. They decided to abandon the stage due to the seriousness of the crash. My teammate got his time bonus from being in the break the previous lap so this moved us up on the team classification and moves him up on GC.

As the wind was so strong the organisers decided the cancel the TTT in the afternoon for the safety of the riders. This was disappointing as we practiced the TTT loads and we had a good chance to win this stage.

Monday morning was a Kermesse around the ground of Strathallan School which was the race headquarters. This circuit was super technical but also had a very steep climb. We had 15laps to complete. After lap1 the whole Ulster team was well positioned at the front but there was a big crash and they stopped the race to clear the course. After the restart the race was really hard for the next few laps and then there was another crash which caused the race to get stopped again. We were stopped for 20mins but we finally got going again. This last half of the race was full gas every lap until the end. Each lap people were getting shelled and by the end it was another reduced bunch. I finished on the back of the lead bunch in 29th.

Overall I finished 21st on GC and Ulster finished 2nd in the team classification. This was the best performance from a Ulster team ever at this race and we really put Ulster on the map. Everyday we were getting mentioned on our aggressive and attacking race style. A huge thanks for Cycling Ulster for the weekend.