Five juniors have been named on the Irish team for the UCI Junior Track World Championships in the Netherlands, which get underway this day week, August 20th.
The junior national track team has taken shape around a new junior endurance group, which has been focusing on the team pursuit as its core activity.
That approach mirrors the successful model in the senior endurance group, which culminated in the female team pursuiters qualifying for the Olympics for the first time last year.
The five-rider junior team for the Worlds is the same junior men's line-up that took on the recent Europeans in Portugal, where Max Fitzgerald hit the heights with a silver medal in the scratch race and breaking the Irish junior kilo record twice.
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The team traveling to Apeldoorn for the Worlds is:
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- Max Fitzgerald (JEGG-SKIL-DJR)
- Elliott McKeegan (Team Madigan)
- George Sevastopulo (Sundrive Track Team)
- Philip O’Connor (Dungarvan CC)
- Luca Holmes (WP Molenspurters)
As well as taking in the team pursuit, they will also ride individual events and the madison. The riders have traveled to Scotland for a pre-Worlds competition camp in a bid to hone their form and technical skills.
Cycling Ireland's high performance development coach, former track world champion Martyn Irvine, said he was very much looking forward to seeing what the riders could do, especially having banked a lot of international experience over the last 12 to 18 months.
“There were huge lessons learned for all of these riders at the European Champs in Anadia in July, and we’re looking to keep progressing here," Irvine said.
"We found some success at Euros, and have had strong performances elsewhere with this group, so we’ll be hoping to continue that success against some of the best in the world.”
