Mark Downey collects gold while Lydia Gurley follows up with bronze

Ireland’s Mark Downey won a gold medal in the 30k points race at the UCI Track World Cup in Cali, Colombia, over the weekend while Lydia Gurley followed up 24 hours later with a bronze in the women’s 10k scratch race.

Downey’s gold follows a similar achievement last November in the Netherlands so perhaps it wasn’t as much as a surprise as the success of complete newcomer Gurley, 32, from Galway.

The latter only joined the Irish performance set-up last year — a fourth-place in the Netherlands showed she was close to the mark.