Having proven himself one of the strongest and most versatile riders in Ireland, Chris McGlinchey is now planning a very different approach to his cycling. He is changing with a view to riding the Commonwealth Games and targeting Olympic selection. He also tells Shane Stokes while he would love to give track racing a very committed effort, the lack of a velodrome and its implications for Irish riders means track is not a viable option.
By Shane Stokes
Having won both the national cyclocross championships and Cycling Ireland’s inaugural eRacing national title in recent weeks, Chris McGlinchey has revealed plans to change tack and focus on mountain bike racing in the coming months.
“I’m actually going to do a bit more cross country,” the Belfast rider told stickybottle. “My main goal for the year will be to qualify for mountain bike in the Commonwealth Games.
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“The qualification period ends at the end of March, so I’ve lined up a few UCI cross country races that I’m planning to do over in Greece at the end of February. And then if I get the results to qualify, that will shape my season a little bit. I’ll likely try and do a lot of the British calendar and then potentially try to get to an XC World Cup or two.”
McGlinchey is best known as a road and cyclocross rider, but actually focused on MTB racing in the early years of his sporting career. He initially raced motorbikes, competing in 50/65cc motocross, but then switched to downhill mountain bike racing after his brother introduced him to the sport.
He took national championship medals and represented Ireland in both the Europeans and World Championships, with his best international result being 42nd at the 2013 Fortwilliam UCI Downhill World Cup. He then grew impatient with what he felt was a lack of progress and switched his emphasis to road racing. Years later, he’s keen to give another area of MTB competition a good go.
“I've done a few cross country races in the past during a road season or a downhill season, for fun more than anything,” he explained. “I’ve never done a full season. But I think with my background in downhill mountain biking and now my endurance from road, it’s kind of the perfect mix of ability, in terms of the technical skills required and the endurance. So I’m looking forward to it."
"I could line up with Van der Poel or Pidcock”
A strong rider who was second in the Irish national road race championship behind Ryan Mullen in 2017, McGlinchey had another good performance in the same race last October when he finished fifth. His victory in early January in the Irish national cyclo-cross championship was a big plus for him, not least because he had chased gold in the event for several years.
Now 27 years of age, he is in the fortunate position of being with a team - Spectra Wiggle p/b Vitus - that is set up to enable its riders to compete across a range of disciplines.
He competed for two years with the UCI Continental team Vitus Pro Cycling while also working for the Vitus company as its marketing manager. That team folded but McGlinchey approached Bruce Dalton, who was running the cyclo-cross team CX Syndicate, and started talking.
“Bruce basically had this vision of a multidisciplinary team and Vitus were keen to support it,” he explained. “They got some other backers and then Spectra Wiggle racing was born. It’s a great initiative. It’s male-female split even down in the middle, racing mountain bikes, road, cyclocross. They are a UCI cyclocross team now, they’ve just done a full cross season in Belgium and are just looking to build on that, really.
“It is a great team for a rider that wants to do more than just one discipline and not be pressured into getting results in just one area. It’s a great outfit, it allows you to try different things.”
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As he acknowledged, road racing will give him a strong fitness and endurance base that he can draw upon in XC competition. He will continue to do some road events while keeping MTB racing as his main focus.
“I probably will still do some road racing with the team,” he confirmed. “They’ll be doing the Tour series and British National Series rounds on the road as well and I’ll likely try and do one or two of the Irish National Road series as well. But XC will probably be my main focus.
“I think the beauty of a sport like cross country is I could rock up the World Cup and line up with Mathieu Van der Poel or Tom Pidcock, whereas you just don’t get that access at a road level. So it’s quite exciting…the prospect of training to race against the top guys in that sport.”
McGlinchey doesn’t yet know how things will go as regards his Commonwealth Games goal. If that pans out well, if he enjoys this area of the sport, and, particularly, if he performs well, there is a longer-term ambition that he is considering.
“The next Olympics is a stretch target,” he said, referring to competing in the MTB cross country events in Paris 2024. “It’s definitely in the back of my mind. But that would require a lot of UCI points searching. So I need to probably sit down with Cycling Ireland and try to get another few riders to commit to trying to qualify for that.
“I think it is the top three riders’ ranking points that determine whether your nation gets a spot for the Olympics mountain bike race, as I think it’s limited to maybe 45 riders.
“So I would need to put a plan in place and potentially see if there’s other riders in Ireland that would be interested in trying to qualify for Paris. It’s definitely something that I’ve said to Cycling Ireland that I’d be keen to try and do.”
“If we had a proper velodrome, I’d be interested”
Commonwealth Games and Olympic MTB aside, McGlinchey has another target on his radar, that of the national road race championships. This ambition is fueled by his strong showings in 2017 and again last year and while he knows that Ireland’s WorldTour riders have experience that he does not have, those two performances illustrate that it is possible for other riders to content for gold.
“Coming close in Wexford and then again this year... it was super close between obviously Mullen and Feeley and then the rest of us in that last breakaway. (Winning the race) would be nice. I’ll probably try and go this year again, if I’m racing a bit of road and the form’s good.”
But what about track racing? Considering his victories in the cyclocross and eRacing championships, as well as his status as a former world number one in Zwift racing, he can clearly shine in shorter, high-intensity events. Would competing in the velodrome appeal to him?
“I’ve never done it,” he answered. “There’s been a few occasions where I could have gone out to Mallorca to the track and tried it out, but with work commitments and other things it has been difficult to actually get the time to do that.
“To be honest, if we had a track in Ireland, a proper velodrome, I’d certainly be interested. But I have a full time job and it’s just not viable for me to spend enough time out in the training camp areas where you would need to be. And I’m the kind of person that would want to commit fully to something. So if I can’t prepare properly for it, I don’t really want to try it, if that makes sense.”
Ireland is due to get its first indoor velodrome in the coming years, but there is no clear timescale for the delivery of the project. There is, however, a very real target of the 2024 Olympic Games, which are just over two years away.
“The long term goal is probably looking towards Paris,” he reiterates, before adding a caveat. “But everything has to go right even just to be able to qualify for that.”
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