The public will be out in force for the two 2027 Grands Dparts as the UK breaks new ground

The Tour of Norway - not to be confused with the Arctic Race of Norway - has come to an end this year, not renewed due to financial constraints. Alexander Kristoff, one of the country's best ever riders, has retired from the sport this winter but deeply laments the end of the country's top event. "...

The prologue of the 2026 Tour Down Under will take place on the 20th of January and will open up the World Tour season. It will be a short but explosive effort which will kick off the action in Australia. The stage will start at 08:30CET and finish at 11:10CET. The stage will be 3.6 kilometers long...

American Matthew Clark has been provisionally suspended by the UCI after failing a drugs test immediately after winning the mens 40-44 age group world championship time trial

This Tuesday, 20th January, the Santos Tour Down Under gets underway. Over six days, the peloton tackles the first WorldTour race of the year in Australia. Well see riders chase stage wins, trying to bank as many as possible to etch their names into the races history. Thats exactly what were foc...

Chlo Dygert is back in Australia to start her 2026 season, hoping to repeat the success she found here last year. The American rider won the final stage of the 2025 Santos Women's Tour Down Under, but her season stalled after that early victory. Now, she is determined to find consistency again. Dyg...

Wout van Aert is recovering from his ankle fracture at a remarkable speed. Just weeks after a season-ending crash at the cyclocross in Mol, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike leader is already back to logging massive distances at the team training camp in Spain. The Belgian star's winter campaign came to...

Comment & Analysis Long Read: Sean ODriscoll is a member of the Governments Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, which has a direct role in feeding into policy, and making the lead story on the cover of The Irish Times yesterday, but what experience does he have in infrastructure delivery, and why is he being treated as an infrastructure expert?He has a Bachelor of Commerce Graduate from University College Cork and is a Chartered Accountant. He also holds a British OBE and a Legion dHonneur. He became chair of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in 2020.ODriscoll is best known as the head of Glen Dimplex, the parent company of Morphy Richards, which he retired from in 2016. Before that, he was a partner with KPMG, and while at Glen Dimplex, he was appointed as a non-executive director of AIB in 2006 and remained in that position until 2009, including the banks collapse, which required the State to bail it out.At a University College Cork conference in 2010, the Irish Examiner reported that he said union leaders were as, or more, responsible for the crash as bankers. He said: The social partners, unelected, who walked in and out of Government buildings, who just love to jump in front of a microphone, they are as culpable as anybody else.ODriscoll has an investment vehicle with holdings in life sciences, tech and food although theres a lack of clarity around his investments beyond the more public ones which have been reported on.He was a major shareholder in oil and gas exploration company Barryroe. Barryroe was refused a permit by then Minister Eamon Ryan for an oil exploration project off the coast, faced insolvency, and in 2023 it was taken private by a Larry Goodman company, with many other investors losing out.Before that major trouble at Barryroe, in August 2020, the Business Post reported: There was speculation last week that the S ODriscoll and R ORiordan named in Providences stock market announcement were Sean ODriscoll and his wife, Rose ORiordan, who are seasoned investors through their investment vehicle Roaring Waters.However, the newspaper reported that he denied being the S ODriscoll in question. ODriscoll said, Youve got the wrong man.But in 2021, the Business Post reported that the couples investment firm, Roaring Waters Capital, had actually invested in Barryroe. In 2022, then Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath, appointed Mr ODriscoll as one of five external members of the Project Ireland 2040 Delivery Board. Its role was to provide strategic direction and leadership to the National Development Plan (NDP) and National Planning Framework (NPF) implementation process.In 2023, Minister Paschal Donohoe reaffirmed this move, and the last available minutes for the Delivery Board are from June 2024. In May of 2025, the new minister in the same role, Jack Chambers, appointed ODriscoll as a member of the new Accelerating Infrastructure task force.He has also been a member of other State advisory groups and several Irish and international non-governmental advisory groups.His intervention last year across a series of interviews, initially with the Irish Examiner, was welcomed, including with enthusiasm on X by Feargal ORourke, fellow taskforce member and chairman of IDA Ireland.But policy advice needs to be backed by evidence, not as ODriscoll put it in one radio interview last year common sense.Its hard to disagree with him on a number of points. Many experts also say that multi-annual funding is needed for infrastructure bodies, that infrastructure funding should not be slashed in downturns, that to fix our housing crisis we need the provision of many types of infrastructure, that we were able to deliver more with less in decades gone by, and that brave action is needed today. All of these things are true and hard to disagree with.He also said that statutory development plans made by local councils should be supported by national planning, which should direct the resources of Irish Water, ESB Networks, etc, and advocated for a national master plan. That, again, is all hard to disagree with.But he also said a few too many contradictory or flippant things in interviews in the last year. As well as making the Irish Times cover story yesterday, hes also featured in the Irish Examiner, on RT Radio Ones Today with Claire Byrne, and in the Business Post.Given his impressive CV (even if not that much of it relates to infrastructure delivery), the regard in which he is held, and his influence on policy, including the NDP of the task force on which he sits, its worth taking a closer look at some of the assertions he made in those media appearances in the last year.When Claire Byrne looked for examples of the issues facing delivery, ODriscoll said the bar is too low for judicial reviews, referencing the 2020 report from Peter Kelly, former President of the High Court.ODriscoll agreed with Byrne that people do have a right to seek review from the courts. So its unclear what more is needed after the Government claims to have tackled the issue via the Planning and Development Act 2024, which includes binding timelines for decision-making and streamlines the judicial review process. Are more changes needed before the Planning Act measures are even fully rolled out? If so, what are they? This vagueness is a problem.Another point was about the risk aversion of civil servants. Sean ODriscoll is not the first person to say that a fear of risk can dominate how the country is run. In both small and large-scale projects, it causes delay and inaction, which increases the cost of projects which we desperately need.However, focusing on civil servants without mentioning ministers is highly questionable when ministers are the ones we elect to call the shots. Its worth noting, too, that allowing years of paralysis to be followed by rushed decisions for example, with the National Childrens Hospital can lead to even worse outcomes in terms of both cost and delivery.ODriscolls interventions have highlighted the undeniable capacity issues with the water supply in Dublin. But before the current crisis caused by decades of underinvestment and exacerbated by a steroid-like increase in demand from data centres a tunnel that supplied 20% of Dublins water had been at risk of collapse for years.Civil and public servants highlighted the issue over and over again, but politicians did not fund the solution for well over a decade after alarm bells were first rung. That has nothing to do with a civil service fear of risk.ODriscolls pronouncements are also vague in how he paints over the fact that data centres are causing a lot of the demand for electricity and water. Even if you support the expansion of data centres, you should be able to admit that they are a central cause of some of our current issues.Despite there being no clear pathway to clear the infrastructure backlog to the extent thats needed, the businessman was dismissive when asked last year about the warning from Oonagh Buckley, secretary general of the Department of Environment, that choices would need to be made between data centres and houses because of the scarcity of power and water.Our industry policies require us to do both, ODriscoll said. And thats exactly the vision we have now with the NDP review the Government can say it is doing everything, but without sacrificing anything. Thats simply not possible, and the NDPs funding allocation, confirmed late last year, confirmed that (roads got more money by reducing public transport funding and delaying shovel-ready projects.He took aim at the Green Party on how much wind energy could be delivered by 2030, and he said offshore wind investors have left town. How, then, would we increase energy supply? Gas or oil plants, which would put us even further off our climate targets?The Examiner reported that regarding climate change targets, he insisted that development should be compatible with those targets but how? Building more data centres and putting the roads building programme back on steroids is simply not compatible with those targets. We cannot have everything all at once, even if we could somehow begin delivering it overnight.On roads, he pointed to the plans for a bypass around Galway and how gridlocked Galway is as if one solves the other, but the data and research do not support the idea that the new road will reduce congestion. Irish and international examples and research indicate that adding more roads adds more cars and quickly enough congestion is back again or worse.Its an effect called induced demand its why the 120 million M7 widening in Kildare, which opened in 2019, resulted in a number of politicians complaining in the same year that the upgrade had not solved congestion and that public transport alternatives are needed.Even without environmental concerns, it never made any sense speeding up traffic heading into the M50 just gave us predictable results: clogging the M50 even more. The nationally important motorway has been at critical levels of commuter traffic for years now.Key rail projects have meanwhile been delayed by decades, and the one which somewhat mirrors the M50, Metro West, was even removed from the Greater Dublin Area Transport Plan due to an apparent lack of demand. MetroLink, which is again close to construction, has been nearly debated to death despite metro networks being normal in cities the size of Dublin.In an interview last year, as well as advocating for the second Galway ring road, ODriscoll also suggested that Corks planned northern distributor road would unlock housing, again, forgetting about the climate cost. Evidence shows that public transport provision has a higher rate of return for unlocking housing. The Cork road project, now renamed Cork Northern Distributor Multi-Modal Route, could be right-sized, too.Even in terms of road building to bypass the city, part of the route from the Carrigrohane Road to the N20 via Apple could be built quicker than the more urban sections. But it seems the big-ban, large-project approach is being taken.ODriscoll weirdly claimed on air with Claire Byrne that the major project is a small, relatively minor, infrastructure road in Cork. He said this with a straight face, even when he mentioned it is a 14km project.Anybody who knows anything about infrastructure knows that a 14km road is not a small or relatively minor. Is he unaware of this? Or was he playing the media again?The cycle paths and bus lane make the project look more sustainable, but very few cities leading in sustainable transport around the world are building new urban four-lane roads with bus lanes on each side its so far from best practice for bus provision that it should not be part of the plan.Cork also does not seem to be learning many lessons from Dublins mistakes or international examples. It does not seem to be even learning from its own experiences the opening of the 215m Dunkettle Interchange Upgrade Scheme in 2024 prompted Transport Infrastructure Ireland to say the project promises to alleviate congestion, improve safety, and streamline traffic flow. But very quickly afterwards, politicians and the public have repeatedly highlighted that congestion, safety issues and that the traffic is anything but streamlined.Under these conditions, the approval of the M28 Cork to Ringaskiddy Project makes even less sense than other road projects. On its Cork City end, the M28 just feeds into the N40, Corks congested southern ring road, which feeds into the Jack Linch Tunnel and the Dunkettle Interchange. Its the M7 upgrade all over again but for Cork, it might have an even wider effect on clogging its large road network.This is not all ODriscolls fault, but were on this road to nowhere at least partly because of voices like his feeding into Government policy decisions. And the we can have it all outlook plays into not just infrastructure but our overall unwillingness to even try to meet our climate targets.Its partly why Government had redirected a large percentage of funding away from public transport towards more roads. Projects like Dart+ South West will now be delayed, leaving many along the M7 without the public transport upgrades that have been promised for decades.IMAGE: Cover of The Irish Times on Friday.Yet, on Friday, we have an interview with ODriscoll published in The Irish Times as their main cover story. This time largely focused on energy. Its worth noting that energy is interlinked with transport, as public transport projects are at risk due to infrastructure constraints and, partly, to high energy demand from data centres.The deference to ODriscoll from The Irish Times is all the more odd as the Business Post basically had the same story last month.Nobody was encouraged to talk about this In fact, people were discouraged to talk about it because you were seen to be negative about Ireland, talking down Ireland and talking down our FDI opportunities. The system was in complete denial, ODriscoll was quoted by The Irish Times.But he was quoted without any clarity about who exactly was discouraging people from talking. These details are important, but often the kind of things which are missing from interviews with him.The main thrust of the interview was reflected in the headline, outlining how Ireland was losing billions of euro in foreign investment due to energy constraints, as well as other infrastructure deficits. This is something the dogs on the street have known about for years, and its been well covered in the media, including by journalists using Freedom of Information requests.Sometimes theres no harm is having critical calls repeated, but why is ODriscoll as if hes the first to ring the alarm bells?The Irish Times reports that hes been contacted by multinational investors about Irelands lost investment opportunities due to our infrastructure issues. But weve seen coverage of multinational companies saying the same thing, either directly or indirectly, before.ODriscoll said its been going on for two to three years, but anyone with a vague memory of tech news related to investments in Ireland will remember that a possible site in Co Galway lost out to Germany for a major Intel investment in 2021, and our infrastructure issues were well known before then.Whats another year? What he is warning about already happened not two years ago, but four.This is the problem: ODriscoll is treated by the Government and the media as if he were an infrastructure expert, but its unclear why, except if experience on State and other advisory boards is self-fulfilling in that it makes one an expert to be on the next one and the next one?There are also questions of transparency a public official, a civil servant, and even a politically appointed advisor face far greater levels of scrutiny and rules. Should this not also apply to members of task forces?

The route for the 61st edition of Tirreno-Adriatico has been revealed, and it marks a return to a classic style of racing. The Race of the Two Seas, scheduled for March 9 to 15, will not feature a high-altitude summit finish this year. Instead, the organizers have designed a course filled with steep...

There was a notable absentee at the Visma | Lease a Bike press day: Fem van Empel. A month ago, the 23-year-old cyclocross world champion made the shock decision to put her career on indefinite hold. While her absence leaves a void in the squad, her legendary teammate Marianne Vos believes it was th...