Martyn Irvine has made some pretty big decisions in recent weeks and it looks like it's back to basics for the 29-year-old Newtownards man.
Ireland’s former World Champion on the track, Martyn Irvine has brought the curtain down on his time with the Unitedhealthcare pro road team.
His plans for next year in relation to finding another team remain a work in progress at this time. However, he has rejoined the Cycling Ireland track programme and looks set to make track racing his main focus once more.
Irvine has been with the US-based Unitetdhealthcare squad for the past two years and while he has had plenty of time during that period to focus on his track commitments, he has also had road obligations to fill.
He lived for most of this year in Denver, Colorado, and when not competing for Ireland or Northern Ireland on the boards he was riding the US criterium circuit with Unitedhealthcare.
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However, it is on the track where he has enjoyed his biggest successes and his return from the US will be welcomed by many in the sport who wanted to see more of him on the track.
At the World Track Championships in Minsk, Belarus, last year he won Ireland’s first gold medal at a World Track Championships for over a century when he took gold in the scratch race. Less than an hour earlier he had taken silver in the individual pursuit.
He suffered a fractured hip at the Tour of Taiwan riding for Unitedhealthcare just weeks after his track triumph which effectively wiped out his entire 2013 road season.
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Golden Day: Irvine's scratch race gold at the World Track Championships last year remains the highlight of a glittering few years despite his crash setbacks. He has the ability to add Olympic gold to his CV in two years and his moving back to the track fold is great news in that regard.
However, by the end of last summer he had battled back to fitness and would go on to win a bronze medal in the omnium at the European Championships in Holland
Determined to rescue his season further, last November he won a gold medal in the points race at the UCI World Cup in Manchester.
He topped a podium that included Garmin-Sharp pro and Olympic omnium champion Lasse Norman Hansen from Denmark and Elia Viviani, the Italian sprint star from the Cannondale top tier pro team.
Irvine would then crash again at the Ghent Six Day last November. That crash proved to be much more serious than first believed but despite being forced into rehabilitation mode again, he bounced back and took a scratch race silver medal at the World Track Championships in Colombia in February.
Since then, he has competed on the road for Unitedhealthcare in the US and represented Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games in both the scratch and points races but, unusually, came away empty handed.
Having ridden the omnium at the London Olympics, where he finished 13th, the Rio Games are now a major target and he would be a real contender for a medal, even gold.
We’ll have reaction from Irvine a little later.
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