On the eve of the first ever (and hopefully last) Virtual Stephen Roche GP I would like to thank everyone involved in getting this up and running and to wish them the best of luck with the event.

Stephen O'Shea and Rachel Glendon have been working with our juniors during the lockdown to keep them motivated, training and learning - they have had a wonderful program with talks form Aidan Hammond, Martin O'Loughlin and Nicolas Roche to name a few. As the programme progressed Stephen & Rachel set our young riders the challenge of stepping up to run the Stephen Roche GP as an Online race so an idea was born!

Andrew Ryan was the man who was suggested by all to lead the team and he has done so brilliantly! For this event they are running a Women's race on Zwift with 4 categories as well as a men's race on RGT Cycling with 2 categories. Andrew and his team have negotiated with both platforms, talked to Cycling Ireland, Dundrum Festival, the Roche family, Declan Quigley, Barry Redmond, Dave Mc, Aidan Collins and many others to get the event set up, the PR organised and the race streaming live. They have done a really professional job and are all still in school!

Andrew's young team includes Luca Holmes, David Harrington, Ruairi Byrne, Olga Buckina and Ronan O’Connor

There is still time to enter and if you cant enter you can still watch! Full details for both are on the home page of the club website Which can be found HERE

Thanks to Declan Quigley who took time out to talk to Stephen Roche about life in the lockdown, his return to training, virtual training and the Roche GP. The interview can be seen here -

Also thanks to Ciaran McKenna of Cycling Ireland, Stephen's parents Bunny & Larry Roche and Dundrum Festival organisers Kevin & Christine McCormack who sent their best wishes by video

To everyone taking part tomorrow night the best of luck, "enjoy" the experience and hopefully we will see you on the roads of Meadowmount in 2021