Slipped chain in sight of finish costs Eoghan Clifford dear

Ireland’s ultra-successful Paralympic cycling team suffered some bad luck right at the end of the testing 71km Road Race course in Rio de Janeiro yesterday.

The cyclists had already bagged four medals between them (two golds, one silver and one bronze) but Galway-based university lecturer Eoghan Clifford, who’d already won C3 Time Trial gold, was left to curse a slipped chain yesterday.

Racing in the combined C1-3 Road Race, he was part of a six-man break that got away in the first lap and included Japan’s reigning world champion Masaki Fujita, Spain’s world bronze medallist Eduardo Santas Asensio of Spain and Italy’s Fabio Anobile.