Brammeier’s Olympic appeal rejected

Matthew Brammeier’s appeal to be included for selection in the three-man Ireland Olympic road race team has been unsuccessful.

The Omega-Pharma Quick Step rider learned of his decision over the weekend when an appeals committee met to discuss whether or not he had grounds to have his case heard again by an initial selection panel.

It is unclear whether the former group decided he had grounds to appeal, but one thing is for sure, and it is he will not be representing Ireland at the London Games as he wasn’t even named as the reserve rider.

The team that will travel is Dan Martin (Garmin Barracuda), Nicolas Roche (Ag2r) and David McCann (RTS Racing), with Sam Bennett (Sean Kelly An Post Team) the reserve man, should one of the above get injured in the meantime.

McCann will ride the time trial, having done so in the past.

It will be McCann’s third Olympics, Roche’s second and Martin’s first.

Meanwhile, the Irish female tandem duo of Catherine Walsh and Fran Meehan repeated their silver medal performance from two weeks ago in Rome when they finished a superb second in Saturday’s Paracycling UCI Road World Cup Time Trial in Segovia.

Ireland’s second female tandem also put in a great performance to claim seventh place in the time trial.

Elsewhere, James Brown and pilot Damien Shaw secured Ireland’s best ever male tandem World Cup finish taking a fine fourth place in their category.

Andrew Fitzgerald and pilot Con Collis finished in 15th place.

Current time trial World Champions Mark Rohan and Colin Lynch were a little disappointed with their 4th and 5th place respectively in the H1 and C2 categories.

It just goes to show how far Irish Paracycling has come that athletes are not satisfied with 4th and 5th place finishes.

Cathal Miller was just outside the Top 10 in the C5 Time Trial finishing in 11th place and Enda Smyth was one place behind in 12th place in the C3 Category.