Junior Tour of Ireland 2026 – Race Report

The biggest race of the season for the juniors and the sixth visit to the race based in Ennis, County Clare ended up being quite the week. The Academy took Joe Egan and Charlie Ratcliffe from last year’s team – and their experience proved invaluable – new first years Xander Brandon-Higgs and James Saunders, with guest riders Lucas Lillistone of Shibden and Jacob Steed of BCC. DS was William Fotheringham.

Stage one was the usual 40-mile evening blast, with the objective for the boys of one finisher in the top 10, to ensure a good car position for the next morning. The stage proved tougher than usual, with several crashes, and the field split to bits, partly prompted by big attacks from Lucas and Jacob, with the latter picking up some King of the Mountain points. At the finish, stage winner was Glen Gregory Kolv from Estonia, with Lucas 10^th, Jacob 12, and Mikey 14^th in a bunch of about 75. Job done.

Day two was another old favourite, the rapid blast down to the Loop Head peninsula, culminating in the Kilkee Cliffs climb. It was a brutal start on the up-and-down twisting roads, with numerous punctures in the field – the team was fortunate not to have one all week, thanks to the attentions of lead mechanic Charlie Ratcliffe – and riders dropped from early on making it a survival day for many including Xander and James.

Up front, a peloton of about 75 riders contested the finish, and this was a massive moment for Lucas and the team: he attacked over the top of the climb, opening a decent gap on the descent and holding on to the sea-front finish to take his first junior road race win by 2sec, with Jacob running 7^th, and taking the King of the Mountains jersey having won the first climb of the day. The win hauled Lucas up to 2^nd overall behind Kolv, and put him in the best first year junior jersey, which gave the Academy two jerseys in the team for day 3, and with Mikey safe in the front group, the team was up to second overall.

Stage 3 over the hills of East Clare and into the village of Whitegate presented quite a few options, but any plans were thrown awry when a very significant group went away on the run out from Ennis, including members of the Ireland national team and Ineos’ feeder squad Hot Tubes. By the top of the second climb of the day with 44km remaining, the gap was 2min, and the race looked set. A big chase ensued after the peloton reformed following the climb, with Rauland and EF Education leading, so Mikey and James pulled some turns up front – a sterling effort by James after a bit of a get-down on the descent – and the gap dropped inexorably.

In the final kilometre it could have gone either way, the peloton closed to within 10sec, and at the finish outside the door of the Half Barrel pub, Team Ireland’s Rian McCrystal took the sprint from the survivors of the break, Cormac Nagle and Alex Botha of Hot Tubes. Lucas and Jacob both relinquished their jerseys, with Lucas slipping to 4^th overall, but crucially there was still everything to play for with only a handful of seconds across the first 50 riders. This was a spectacularly fast stage, with an average speed of 28.9mph over some decent hills.

Stage four over 122km was the toughest climbing stage of the race, the traditional run north from Ennis over the limestone pavements of the Burren and into the little town of Kilfenora. Jacob did his KoM prospects a lot of good by winning the first cat 2 climb at Carran, and the finale over Castle Hill at Doolin was contested by a lead bunch of about 75. The super-steep climb saw the usual blow-ups and derailed chains and chaos behind the race, with Xander unfortunate to drop his chain even before the climb began, ruining what had looked like a strong day for him.

Over the top, Jacob took more climbing points out of a small group before the front of the race came back together into a group of 37, with Lucas and Mikey safe in there; at the finish McCrystal took his second stage win to extend his lead thanks to time bonuses, while Mikey ran in 8^th, Lucas 12^th, and Jacob 16^th. That gave the Academy  best team on the hardest day of the race; with Jacob 2^nd in the KoM by 6pt, and Lucas climbing to 3^rd overall, it was all still on.

It was back to the Burren for stage 5, 108km over some of the same roads, but this time finishing at Ballyalia Lake on the outskirts of Ennis, with the major climb the three mile drag from the coast up to the top of the Burren. This was where the main action came, with the field split in pieces after a big crash at the foot; a good-looking break consisting of riders looking for the KoM points went away, but unfortunately four of them came down on a left-hand bend on the top of the Burren, with both Jacob and KoM leader Hugh Og Mulhearne involved. Sadly Jacob’s race ended here with a broken collarbone, a bitter end to five days in which he had raced superbly.

The race came back together up front, with a 37-rider group contesting the finish, on good but twisting roads. In the final kilometres, Lucas took advantage of a lack of control from the Irish team to get away in a five-rider group, leading across the line for his second stage win of the race, with the peloton 9sec behind. An exceptional piece of riding from a first-year junior which gave him the yellow jersey by just 3sec from McCrystal, the second time the Academy has held yellow in the Junior Tour after Tomos Pattinson in 2022. Behind, Mikey was 9^th, moving up to 14^th overall, while Joe, James and Xander all finished safely to effectively complete the race. The feeling of celebration was somewhat muted however with Jacob out of the race, and in a fair amount of pain.

That left the yellow jersey to defend on the final morning’s stage over a 9km circuit outside Ennis, with the knowledge that McCrystal’s 3sec deficit could simply be made up with a time bonus in the event of the bunch finishing together – and obviously this would be the Irish team’s preferred option, to rely on the sprint that had already given McCrystal two stages. At the same time, with 19 other riders between 13sec and 29sec back, the team couldn’t let one or more of those get to the finish with a significant time gap. The plan then was to monitor the early moves with James, Joe and Xander, then let the Irish try to control the finale, with Mikey held in reserve to help Lucas where possible.

The finish saw a bunch sprint, but it was never going to be a straightforward one, with traffic calming and a brutal little kicker in the final kilometre. Lucas was boxed in at a key moment, McCrystal was not, and that was game over after the Irish lad finished 2^nd to Spokes Cycles Fraser Gemmell. Second overall with two stage wins plus a huge fight in the KoM prize was a great outcome, but there’s always a sense of what might have been when the team was this close to a victory of this magnitude.

Huge well done to all the lads, with James and Xander getting safely through the biggest week of their bike racing lives, Joe and Mikey putting in sterling work, while Jacob and Lucas both put in a magnificent shift at the coalface.

Photos: Sport Photo Ireland