The Irish National Cycling Championships are annual cycling races to decide the Irish cycling champion for several disciplines, across several categories of rider.
The men's road championship is usually held on a Sunday at end of June; the women's race is held the previous day. The winning élite rider wears the national champion's jersey for all road races in the following 12 months. The men's under-23 champion is awarded to the first under-23 in the élite race. The junior road races are held on the same day as the élite and the time-trial championship is earlier in the week. The national criteriums are later in the summer. The 2012 races are: Thurs 21 June - Time Trials (senior, U23/espoir, women); Sat 23 June - women's, veterans road races; Sun 24 June - senior, U23/espoir, women road races.
Famous quotes containing the words irish, national and/or cycling:
“Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual’s eyes shine, and they start to talk to me about the Russian people. Something in me says, Watch it, a new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.”
—Warren Beatty (b. 1937)
“It is to be lamented that the principle of national has had very little nourishment in our country, and, instead, has given place to sectional or state partialities. What more promising method for remedying this defect than by uniting American women of every state and every section in a common effort for our whole country.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (1839–1908)