Irish road, track and cyclocross international Lara Gillespie is moving to UCD Cycling Club for racing at home in 2020 and to ILLI-Bikes Cycling Team in Belgium for international competition.
She moves away from Orwell Wheelers after a brilliant tenure as an U16 and junior rider as she has started at University College Dublin where she is now doing a degree in Health and Performance Science.
Thanks to her results Gillespie has been awarded a UCD scholarship, which involves a switch to the university's cycling team for her domestic racing next year when she ages out of the juniors and into the U23-elite ranks.
And as she also plans to continue her development with international competition, securing a place with ILLI-Bikes will further that goal.
It is the same team that experienced Irish international rider Michelle Geoghegan rode for this year.
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“I was delighted to get into the Elite Ad Astra Scholarship programme for cycling,” Lara Gillespie told stickybottle.
“Orwell
has been so supportive over the years
and I am so grateful to them. I can’t wait to get more bunch racing experience.
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“I’ll have
a good winter of training to prepare
me for the season and to race with team
pursuit at the beginning of the year.”
Gillespie added that having a mix of a new Irish club in UCD CC and a new Belgian team next year would bring lots of opportunities at home and abroad.
“Because there aren’t many races with the U23 category I’ll be learning as much as I can with the elites,” she explained.
She won the junior road race crown last year in the colours of Orwell Wheelers along with two elite national cyclocross titles.
In 2017 she won a silver medal in the TT at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Hungary.
Last year at the junior Europeans she won the points race
title and took a silver in the individual pursuit.
Earlier this year she won three silvers at the Europeans;
in the points race, individual pursuit and scratch race.
She also went to the World Junior Track Championships, as Ireland’s sole representative, and took bronze in the individual pursuit.
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