The Racing Team had a successful end of season trip to the Charleville 2-Day 2013. I would like to publicly thank the team from St Tiernans CC in Sth Dublin who teamed up with us to ensure an excellent back-up on a very busy weekend logistically. It was a marvellous alliance. Our own Hugh Gallagher was injured, so with John Gillespie carrying the sticky bottles, Hugh acted as the A2/3 Car and feathered the clutch and blew the horn like an expert all weekend. Dave Fielding rode superbly and was set for a near top 40 place on GC (riding against some genuinely top class Irish juniors) only to take a wrong turn along with a large group of riders, incurring a major time penalty, which was hugely unfortunate. Luke, Kenny and Joe all experienced the ups and downs of stage racing and will live to fight another day. Our team performance however was capped by a 6th place overall by the 4 racing debutantes in A4 – Lyns O’Neill, Emily-Anne Doyle, Chucky Dunne and Sean O Callaghan. This was no mean feat, given the atrocious weather, heavy roads and very testing parcours and seeing that one third of the field failed to finish. It was an especially fine effort from our two women who have made giant strides in order to compete at this level against the men this year. Sean can consider himself very unlucky – after 5th in stage one and a solid TT Saturday evening, he was still with the strong leading group of 23 with 20km to go and with a chance of overall success. An untimely puncture and a slow change in the Ballyhoura Hills derailed his hopes but he won the sprint of the second peleton to also demonstrate just how much this teenager has improved this year. Watch this young man – he isn’t finished in 2013 yet. Overall, one of the best weekends we have had riding for Naas CC.