Passionate cyclo-cross fan given privilege of building course after two years of learning tricks of the trade from the Belgian masters It’s a privilege, but it’s all a challenge,” says Paddy Daly, the man who’s been handed the responsibility of turning a small corner of Dublin into a home fit for the diehard Belgian cyclo-cross fans.
Daly is mixing business with pleasure out in Abbotstown as he oversees the building of the 3.5km course on the Sport Ireland campus that will host next Sunday’s Dublin World Cup. Daly owns the Donnybrook Landscaping company who have been contracted by event organisers Flanders Classics to construct the course. This year Flanders have taken a more hands-off approach and handed over responsibility to the locals. Daly, a passionate cyclo-cross racer and fan, volunteered with the build over the previous two years and learned the nuances from the experts. “They are less hands-on this year so it’s a great vote of confidence,” he says. “I think they’re very happy with the campus and the support they get coming here. There are other countries where it’s a struggle for them when they go outside Belgium, there are very few problems in their way. It’s a nice thing that they’re coming back because it’s a huge global event.” The process has been a learning curve on both sides since they first came to Dublin in 2022.
“A team of men came over from Belgium,” he continues. “These are older, hardened men and they do this every winter and they’re very good at this. They have all the tricks which I’ve learned off them over the last two years, so Flanders came to me during the summer and asked me about doing it.“I’m delighted to do it.” This year, in particular, it suited both parties for Daly to step up into a lead role. The calendar has been revised, so there’s races nearly every week so as a result resources wise, they’re fairly limited. They might have three build crews and three events crews overlapping each other for instance, there’s one in Antwerp this weekend.” Flanders invited Daly over to Maasmechelen last year to see what the full Belgium World Cup experience is like, with the multiple beer tents, large marquees for VIP hospitality and the party atmosphere; all elements that will be replicated in Dublin. However, despite the two previous editions in Dublin, Daly and his team were largely starting from scratch again in Abbotstown. “It’s completely blank. It’s completely bare. Everything’s gone from last year. It’s a two-week build and a two-day takedown.”
The main part of the build includes setting 1,200 posts along the 3.5km course, running 7km of rope (it’s double-sided) along those posts and then adding 7km of netting. There’s also 80 tonnes of sand to fill the 60 metre-long pit which the riders will either try ride or run through. “I have an outline of where the course should go. They use digital mapping for the course and that’s my guide and then I have to decide exactly where the course markers goes. There’s roughly two days of marking out it out. I have to mark where each of the 1,200 posts go, with spray paint. There’s quite a bit of precision there,” explains Daly, who says these materials will be donated to use at the Irish national championships in Ballinasloe in the new year. With most of these materials being sourced locally, Flanders Classics project manager Brecht Toelen said they had to adapt their approach for dealing with Irish suppliers. “We learned a lot of things from the first year, almost nobody knows cyclo-cross in Ireland,” he says. “It’s always easy in Belgium if we say we need this or that – the companies know already what it is. But for Ireland we have made a document with pictures with it for companies here [to help explain what we need].” However, some of the key equipment and infrastructure will be transported from Belgium this week
“For the World Cup organisers, it’s like a travelling circus,” Toelen explains. “This weekend we’ve a race in Antwerp, there we have the finish truck, the changing room truck, you have a truck with materials and a truck with all the LED screens and they’re going from one race to another, always. They will take everything down in Antwerp in Belgium, go to France, take the ferry and will be in Dublin on Wednesday.”
They have also learned that it’s cheaper to bring some materials from Belgium than it is to rent them in Ireland. So the generators will be on the five-truck fleet while their regular suppliers of sound equipment will also travel over from Belgium to make sure the system is up to their own highest standards However, one of the big positives from Flanders’ point of view is the campus itself.“The venue is a dream for us to organise a cyclo-cross race. You have all the facilities around and you have a nice track, enough space to make a good course. “It’s important to have a cycling race in this part of Europe. We were trying to organise one before in the UK but it’s difficult, here it’s easy, here we’ve had a lot of support from Sport Ireland. “And a good thing for the riders, we have the National Indoor Arena, it’s the only cyclo-cross race providing an indoor area for the teams. The teams can drive over with buses and camper vans but if they want they just need to put their bikes on the planes and fly in and they have everything on site.”
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Flanders Classics have taken many of the lessons they’ve learned in Dublin in their bid to expand the platform for the UCI World Cup series. “The goal is to make it more of a ‘world’ cup and we’re always searching for new countries and venues, and I think we’ve made some big steps with Dublin, Benidorm and Sardinia and it’s the perfect fit in the idea of the World Cup for Flanders Classics.”
A week out from the big day Toelen is confident the course is coming together as planned and has full confidence in Daly’s team, who will put about 300 man hours into the project.
That work will be on full display via Eurosport on Sunday. And that has been an ongoing area of concern for Daly, making sure the camera positions are perfect for the coverage so none of the action is missed. “Flanders have been out and we walked the course the week before and the main thing that’s crucial for live TV is the camera positions,” Daly says. “This is a huge element, that the coverage is really high-level. The riders can’t disappear off the camera. There’s a handover from one camera to the next. I have to always have the cameras in the back of my mind when I’m laying out the course and setting the corners. It’s a good challenge.”
However, by the time the weekend comes most of his work will be done, though he will be kept busy during the junior race helping out his son Ryan, who was named in the Ireland team for the event. After that he’ll enjoy a beer and the community feel that’s very much part of the cyclo-cross experience.
Thankfully, Toelen confirms there will be beer on the campus after a trip to court in Dublin last week to secure the licence.
“We were in court today to get an alcohol licence, it’s approved again!” he says with mock relief. “That was the biggest thing we had to do, all the rest is in place.
“It’s the only country where we organise that we need to go to court to get a licence. The first year we didn’t get a licence because it was too late. Last year it was a lot of work to understand who it works but this year it was quite easy, but I explained in court what cyclo-cross is today. “They told me the best way to describe it was to compare it with cross-country running but with a bike.” If the judge approves, we’ll drink to that.
