It looks like a bunch of Irish Continental level riders won't get to ride the Ras this year. The Ras functions as a kind of stage race national championships, with usually pretty much all of the Conti riders plus all the top domestic amateurs involved.
The UCI has refused to give the Ras an exception to the rules to allow Cycling Ireland to field a national team which includes riders not selected for their trade team if the trade team is sending a squad. These rules do actually exist for a sensible purpose, to prevent riders having a conflict of interest.
Unfortunately, five (ie close to half) of the Irish Conti riders are on the An Post team, and it seems hard to imagine more than one or two of them making the squad. The Ras is pretty central to the team's season and on this years form, their best performing riders have been Bagdonas, McNally, Vanbilsen and Eeckhout. It's also by no means guaranteed that the Irish riders on the British Conti teams will make their squads.
The net result is that it's quite likely that there'll be little or no local GC interest in the race, unless perhaps the Asian based RTS riders perform unexpectedly well. The domestic amateurs are hopelessly outmatched nowadays with a whole bunch of good Conti teams serious about winning.
I'm not normally nationalistic about bike racing at all, but the Ras thrives while races like the Tour of Ireland died precisely because of the local interest.
http://www.stickybottle.com/races-r...an-post-sean-kelly-irish-riders-may-miss-out/
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