McGettigan lifts Club Champion crown

July 13, 2014 – The most coveted title of the racing season was up for grabs at Black Bull on Saturday, July 12 as a sea of St. Tiernan’s purple flooded the Club Championships.

Martin Vereker had been hotly-tipped to lower reigning champion Alan Cody’s colours and Leinster TT Gold Fergal May tried to sneak in under the radar, but it was the dark horse John McGettigan who flew home first.

In a three-lap race that took in Dorey’s Forge and The Mullagh, Cody appeared to take first blood, bolting away from the semi-scratch and scratch bunch with Lucan’s Mark Reilly on the first lap.

The pair had taken more than two minutes out of their four minute handicap over the limit and semi-limit peloton by the time they crossed the line for lap two, but Reilly was alone dragging the front of the race when they hit the final lap – the chasing bunch still a minute and 20 seconds down.

Galvanised by the bell, the chasers knuckled down, caught the front bunch and began to attack. Reilly galloped in first to the tune of his team car’s excited horns, warming the crowd up for the main event as the sprinting pack approached.

“He came from nowhere,” his team-mates would say later, but McGettigan’s move was no fluke as he coolly pipped Vereker, outstretched, by a bike and a half to be crowned Club Champion of 2014.

The final place on the podium went to Cody, who nicked third spot from Martin Caddow by the width of a tyre in a photo-finish. Don’t think it was that close? Watch the video. Pictures are in the gallery.

The Club Championships from Jessica Lamb on Vimeo.