Hammond races- a thank you.

I have to say a huge thank you to all of the volunteers who made today's race run as well as it did. I tried to thank as many of you as possible at the time but didn't manage to catch everyone. There's a golden rule of never trying to thank everyone by name, but it really was a great job and everyone deserves a mention, so thanks to:

Pat Conlon, Luke Foley, Stephen Gunn, Martin Kennedy, Barry Redmond, Martin Caddow, Dick O'Brien, Sandra Telford, Aideen Collard, Ciara O'Hagan, Siobhán O'Connor, Owen O'Flaherty, Roger Broadhurst, Konstantinos Michalitsis, Ronan Foley, Declan Quigley, Ken McCullagh, Patrick Santini, Phillipe Bourdarias, Eamon Finn and Eddie Lynch for standing out on corners in some fairly intense weather;

John Marron, Ian Mellor, Paul Tansey, Ronnie Brannigan, Anne Dalton and Declan Byrne for driving the lead cars;
Tommy Campbell, Phil O'Brien and Oliver McKenna for Commisairing the races, plus Tommy O'Connell, Colum Sower and Sarah Doyle for driving or helping them, and Frankie Gibson for the photo-finish;
Steve Whelan and one other gent who's name I unfortunately missed who were our motorcycle outriders- so worthwhile on a course like that;
The Gardaí, both Roundwood and Traffic Corps;
Ciara Long and Aoife Sheridan for running the sign-on so smoothly;
Catherine Downes- free leg massage after a bike race- I can see it catching on;
Fionn and Naoise Sheridan for a host of small unseen jobs like delivering leaflets to residents and posting signs;
Darragh Long for winning his race and then coming straight back out to help out with the Senior races;
Diarmuid Collins for going to an impressive degree of detail in organising the marshals;
Dave Tansey for any number of background jobs, not to mention donating the prizes for the Youth and women's races;
Damien Long who was running the Youth races and made sure that everything under his control went perfectly;
Deirdre O'Connor and Jeni Sheridan for the catering- I've never heard of the tea and sambos being handed out before a race, but I heartily approve, not to mention marshals being fed mid-race, making a cold day much more bearable;
And of course Aidan Hammond- the brains of the operation.

This was a day of which we can all be very proud, so once again thank you to you all.

Thank you

I second the thanks to Dave Mc. He does a huge amount of behind the scenes organisation to make sure all the detailed support stuff is where it's needed on the day.

I also want thank Jen for looking after the marshalls. It makes a big difference to have someone come around to ask if you'd like a coffee and sandwich. More of that please! Besides the actual sustenance, it helps to make you feel part of the event - it can get very quiet out there waiting for the race to come around.

Thanks Dave for filling in to the role I half-completed!

Looking forward to the next Orwell outing at the Stephen Roche GP.