Cycling: Ireland on track to make mark in Paris
This week they arrive in Paris with hopes of more medals at a World Championship.
It’s a faintly ridiculous situation, but one which the country’s elite track cyclists make light of as they kick off the five-day event today with a talented squad hungry for glory.
Brian Nugent is Cycling Ireland’s head coach with responsibility for both the Olympic and Paralympic programmes and there is no shying away from the ambitions held by him and his riders as they prepare to perform at the Velodrome Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelinez.
“We certainly have our sights set on a medal. There’s no magic formula to it. You do have to work hard and we have two or three riders in the squad who have medaled before and are well capable of doing it again.
"It’s just about building it up over a period of time. We fully integrated the programme 18 months ago and brought it to Majorca. We’re training in warm weather conditions for the road and there is a velodrome nearby. We have everything we need between staff and facilities and it is paying dividends.”
The decision to focus on the track in the late noughties was a deliberate move by Cycling Ireland. With 10 Olympic medals on offer, it dwarfs the returns available on the road (four) and for mountain biking (two).
Progress has been obvious. Caroline Ryan became the first Irish person to claim a World Championship medal since Harry Pearson took bronze in Glasgow in 1897 when she was third in the Points Race in Melbourne three years ago.
Martyn Irvine followed that up a year later in Minsk when he won gold in the Scratch and silver in the Individual Pursuit. That momentum was extended 12 months ago when the man from Newtownards added a silver in the Scratch.
Recent events have been harder. Irvine broke a collarbone at the UCI World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico in November and returned last month for the World Cup meet in Colombia with a solid performance after his convalescence.
“Martyn had the worst bad luck you can get,” said Nugent.
“He crashed in his very first World Cup event. He missed two qualifying events which meant he scored zero (Olympic qualifying) points and got back on the bike in Cali with only four or five weeks preparation. He’s close to full fitness now because he has had two or three months prep.
"It’s a tough World Championship field but he is in good shape and form and there is no reason why he shouldn’t be up there with the top five, six, and even challenging for a medal.”
Irvine will again compete in tomorrow’s 15km Scratch race while Ryan takes the line for Saturday’s women’s Scratch 10km, which isn’t too dissimilar to the Points Race in which she won bronze in 2012.
The other chief medal prospect is Ryan Mullen in Saturday’s Individual Pursuit 4km. Still only 20, Mullen finished fourth in last year’s World Championships and claimed a silver on the road at the World Championship Time Trial in the U23 category this year.
The nine-strong team will compete on all five days across Team Pursuits, Scratch, Omnium, Individual Pursuit and Sprints in an event that, medals aside, offers the opportunity to stock up on considerable qualification points for the 2016 Olympics.
Irvine has been Ireland’s sole track representative this past two Olympics, in Beijing and London, but the ambition is to double that representation before turning the collective focus towards an even greater assault on Tokyo in 2020.
Who knows, Ireland may have a velodrome by then. The elite team, as we should see this week, is doing fine without it but the boost of such a facility would be almost unquantifiable.
“We are picking athletes from a much smaller pool, bringing them to Majorca and trying to make the best of it,” said Nugent.
“If you have a facility in Ireland you will get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children coming through that. It would increase our numbers by 60-80%.
“It would be massive.”
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