Ireland’s Ryan Mullen has taken a silver medal at the Junior European Time Trial Championships in Zeeland, Holland.
The national junior road race and TT champion was edged into second place by a Norwegian rider over the 24.9km course this morning, Thursday.
Mullen stormed around the course in 30:25.35, with the winner Madthias-Wickma Krigbaum going ten seconds faster.
In third place was Slovenian rider Matej Mohoric, who was just one second slower than Mullen.
Today’s silver for Mullen – who is backed by http://planetxireland.com/ – comes after a superb run in recent months.
He has been on the Continent with the Irish junior team for the past three weeks for a training and racing trip aimed at preparing riders for the Europeans and he took victory in a criterium last week.
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He has also broken a string of TT records this summer, and is now faster over 10 miles than any Irish junior rider ever and is even faster than both Bradley Wiggins and Chris Boardman were as juniors.
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Today’s result comes as a welcome boost to Cycling Ireland, which has opted to refocus its efforts this year on developing very young riders – from their early teens into the junior ranks.
Irish team manager, Frank O’Leary said while he always felt Mullen was capable of getting a big result, securing the silver was a fantastic performance.
He said the Irish junior riders have been based near the Europeans course for the past three weeks and have been over it countless times.
“Ryan knew every inch of it today; that really paid off. He also won the silver by just one second and there’s no doubt that the training and racing we’ve done here in the past few weeks has prepared him. I think it’s justified everything we have done.”
O’Leary was also full of praise for Ireland’s other rider in the TT, Dylan Foley, who was 63rd today.
“Dylan has been a bit unlucky. He crashed in a race at the weekend and also came off on the TT course yesterday. As well as that, he got an infection from a bite. So he has had a bit of bad luck. But he’s only 16, he’s here to learn and he is one for the future, there’s no doubt about that.”
We’ll have more on this later.
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