Hopes that the Skerries 100 would return this year have been dashed following official confirmation that the oldest Irish road race in the Republic of Ireland has been cancelled.

The Loughshinny Club has confirmed the news, which means there will be no road racing in southern Ireland for the second successive year.

Scheduled to run over the first weekend in July, the event was set to mark its 75th anniversary in 2021.

However, the club has reluctantly thrown in the towel in its quest to run the event, due to the ongoing uncertainty around Covid-19 and the ‘unknown insurance costs’ involved in running a one-off race.

 

The Skerries 100 in north county Dublin has been cancelled for the second
successive year due to uncertainty around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The statement said:

“With the rollout of the vaccine we had hoped that by the time of the first weekend in July came around, the country would be once more open for business.

“Unfortunately, this doesn’t look like the case, and with the current level 5 lockdown, or even the prospect of the country dropping to level 4 or below, it is still not enough to give the club the hope that would enable us to proceed.

“The unknown cost of insurance for a one-event road race may well be out of our reach, but to date we haven’t been given a quote by our governing body, as they have instructed affiliated clubs that they ‘will not be issuing permits at present and we will only do so when we are given the green light from Sport Ireland’.

“Unfortunately, like the other southern clubs who have already cancelled their 2021 road races, the club have taken the regrettable decision to cancel the iconic road race for a second year running.”

The Armoy meeting in July and the Cookstown 100 in September are the only Irish road races set to take place this year in Northern Ireland.

Kyle White