Quanta Capital Junior Tour of Ireland | Top US riders among 130 starters - Ireland News Beep

Kash Adamski is the reigning US junior TT champion and won the American road title last year. He’s one of the US threats in the Junior Tour of Ireland this week

If the Leaving Cert is over and the sun is out, it must be time again for one of the best junior stage races in the world, the Quanta Capital Junior Tour of Ireland.

The 2026 edition starts with a quick fire opener tomorrow, Tuesday, when the riders will race from Ennis to Barefield, via Maghera. There then follows five more road race stages until the race concludes in Ennis on Sunday.

Reputations, and friendships, will begin to be made over the next week of racing in Co Clare, and some of those will endure a lifetime. This has always been a rite of passage event for the Irish, and increasingly for the foreign visitors.

Some riders who went on to be top World Tour pros have made their bones on this race and the field set to do battle over the next six days will likely prove no different in time.

A total of 130 riders are on the provisional start list – which will probably change a little by the time the race rolls out for stage 1 tomorrow – with 34 Irish cyclists among them.

Matthew Walls of Cycling Leinster during stage 6 of 2025 Junior Tour of Ireland on the way to overall victory (Photo: Stephen McMahon-Sportsfile)

The Americans have done increasingly well in the race over the past decade. For example, current US champion, Quinn Simmons (Lidl Trek), won a stage in 2019 and then went on to win the junior road race at the Worlds just weeks later.

Very often the US talent has come from the Hot Tubes team and this year they have, Kash Adamaski, who looks very strong – the dual road and track rider already having won 17 American titles.

He won the TT title at the US championships last month – 12 months after winning the road race – and has taken a series of other top results across the US and Europe in recent months.

He won the final general classification in the Tour de Gironde in France in May and also the Mémorial Jimmy Duquennoy, a one-day in Belgium, in April, just a week before representing the USA at Paris-Roubaix.

Desmond Mohr of Boulder Junior Cycling has looks like a very strong prospect. He has just finished 3rd overall at the Tour of America’s Dairyland has represented the USA in Italy, France and Switzerland so far this season.

EF Education-ONTO are also in the race and the American team should make a mark. Kaison Smith, for example, won silver in the junior road race at the American championships.

Smith is an established US road international, as are his Junior Tour team mates Jacob Hines and Enzo Berghout.

The British riders in the field are a little harder to judge. But, on the basis of British performances on this race down the years, there will be several on the start list whose names we’ll be very familiar with by next Sunday evening.

We’ll have more later on the Irish riders expected to do most of the damage.

Last year Matthew Walls, riding for Cycling Leinster, launched his career by winning the final yellow jersey. Since then he has just completed his Leaving Cert and is currently racing for APS Pro Cycling, against World Tour riders, at the Sibiu Cycling Tour (2.1).

Previous winners also include: Martin Earley, Nicolas Roche, Ian Stannard, Luke Rowe, Sam Bennett and Eddie Dunbar.

July 7th-12th | Junior Tour of Ireland

Quanta Capital Junior Tour of Ireland | Top US riders among 130 starters

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