Sean Kelly believes that leading pro riders like Tom Pidcock, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel can successfully combine road and cyclocross racing if their schedules are carefully managed.
Kelly was amongst the 8,000 spectators that watched as the Tour de France green jersey winner Van Aert stormed to his first victory of the cyclocross season at the World Cup in Dublin on Sunday.
Cyclocross world champion Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) was also in action in Dublin, finishing third with a last lap burst of pace on the muddy course. The L’Alpe d’Huez stage winner has also combined a busy road calendar along with a cyclocross programme after being crowned world champion in the discipline earlier this year.
Van der Poel missed the Dublin World Cup round but has also been in formidable form since returning to cyclocross and will return to racing at next week's Val di Sole cyclocross World Cup race that will be contested on snow.
Kelly enjoyed a successful career as a Classics rider in the eighties, often stretching himself across stage races and even winning the 1988 Vuelta a España. He admired the rider's modern approach to multidisciplinary racing.
“It’s great to see and it proves that you can do both once you’ve studied it well and the riders get to know what they’re capable of doing in the wintertime," Kelly said.
"Of course not to do too much and get the right amount so it helps you on the road. It can work very well once it’s well planned.”
Kelly says the trio are showing the next generation of riders that multidiscipline riding can be done.
“Pidcock they can very much relate to as he’s a very young guy,” Kelly added.
“Also an English speaker and all of that does help. Now they can see that you can do cyclocross and also the road at a very high level like Pidcock, Van Aert and Van Der Poel.
“It’s a route that maybe we can get some guys doing the road and get more riders onto the road circuit. That’s what we need."
Kelly who won the Tour de France green jersey four times and nine Monument Classics says that Ireland has had a ‘problem’ for ‘many years’ of few road riders progressing into the senior ranks. He hopes that having the multi-discipline stars in Dublin for the event can help to inspire the next generation of Irish riders.
“To have this event shows the younger guys what it’s like, they can see the big champions here and it’s a big boost,” he added.
“That’s what we need here in Ireland. We’re having a problem that for so many years we don’t have enough of the younger boys and girls coming into cycling.
“We have a lot of people who are older 35 or 40 who are biking. But we need the younger generation to see that we can have somebody who can maybe go on in cyclocross and also go onto the road.”
Another problem Kelly says, that is hindering the development of cycling in Ireland, is the perceived safety of cycling on the road. He hopes that the growth of cyclocross events and Sunday’s Dublin World Cup event will boost the numbers progressing onto the road.
“It’s great to have such a high standard event here because cyclocross there’s been a lot of events in the last number of years,” added Kelly.
“It’s a good way to getting people into cycling as a sport because it’s safe. The problem is now with road racing there’s all the health and safety and a lot of parents are a little bit concerned about leaving their children to go into the racing.
“With cyclocross you’re on a closed circuit and they feel that is much safer. It shows there’s interest in it and hopefully there will be a spin-off from this one.
“Events that we have every weekend that there will be more and more people that come along to it. In that way there will be more people that get into it, the younger generation.”
Despite not being renowned as a cyclocross rider, Kelly did try the sport during his first years with the Flandria team in 1977-78.
“I did do it in the beginning in my first years as a professional,” Kelly remembered
“My manager Jean de Gribaldy sent me to Switzerland, the first two years I went out there. At that time that was at the end of the 1970s and Switzerland was a very high level there.
“I learnt something from the bike handling but I was way off the pace. I was probably lapped twice during the race. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but when you look back I think it was something of an experience. It all helped for later. Unfortunately I maybe didn’t do enough of it, out there for two weeks in the winter time.
“I liked to be back home here in Ireland after the road season. It was also more difficult to travel at that time of course.”
