Brian Nugent has had a busy season as Cycling Ireland's head coach and says while Ireland did not get a result from the World Road Championships, the lessons from it will be used by the federation into the future.
By Brian Canty
Now nine months into his role as Cycling Ireland’s head coach and Brian Nugent is hopeful next week’s European Track Championships will be kinder than the road Worlds in Italy a fortnight ago.
A cursory glance over the year so far reveals a hectic schedule as Nugent has tried to drive forward the elite and development programmes.
The 2013 season has seen the Cookstown native spend most of the summer in Belgium and Holland preparing the national junior team for the World Track Championships in Glasgow.
That was followed by the UCI World Road Championships in Italy and now he’s in Majorca with Caroline Ryan and Martyn Irvine fine-tuning preparations for next week’s European Track Championships in Holland.
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Looking back at Florence, Nugent admits it certainly wasn’t a case of the luck of the Irish, especially where Saturday’s and Sunday’s road races are concerned.
One finisher from seven starters in the junior and elite men’s and women’s road races combined was not a good statistic.
A combination of bad luck and inexperience for different riders was probably the team’s undoing, Nugent said.
In the women's race Mel Spath and Olivia Dillon were among a group of riders pulled out going out on to the last lap. In the men's race Nicolas Roche crashed on the second lap of 10 and Dan Martin crashed the following lap. Sam Bennett ripped spokes from his wheel on lap two and Matt Brammeier waited on Roche after his spill. He, Bennett and Roche were out of the race after two laps and Martin was gone by the fourth.
In the junior race, Dylan Foley and Mark Downey were dropped soon after the race entered the circuit in Florence and were eventually pulled out, though Foley had a mechanical just before the first climb on the circuit which ruined his ride. Eddie Dunbar lasted in the depleted peloton for three of the five passages of the climbs and while he was then distanced, he thankfully finished the race.
Said Nugent: “With the juniors, I knew they would be disappointed but we just said ‘two of you are first year juniors so don’t be too hard on yourself’. It was all about experience from the start, which was our goal.”
“They can now see how the format works, with the amount of people around, there’s a lot going on so it’s about getting used to that environment for next year when they come back.”
“They’ll have an opportunity to come back and perform again so it was a good learning experience from that point of view. Eddie (Dunbar) finished the race so he has to be pleased with that.”
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“We always set performance goals and we said the biggest thing was to get this level of experience, so we can put a plan in place to go about getting the best result possible. We were beaten by guys with more experience.”
As regards the elite race a day later, Nugent said: “One minute everything was going to plan, the next thing the race is over. So it was a shock, it’s not what we expected at all but look, these things happen.”
“It’s different when you don’t perform well but when things like that happen you just have to deal with it and move on. That’s part of high performance sport. There was no one really pleased with themselves, it was just out of our control so we had to accept it, get back on the bikes and keep going.”
It was Nugent’s maiden voyage into managing a road team of that nature, and it’s an experience he said he enjoyed.
“It was interesting, for me personally, it was a good experience managing a team like that. The first half of the week went really well with the time-trials, with Ryan Mullen especially (finishing 7th in the U23 race).”
“Then the road races; generally we didn’t have a lot of luck. It was disappointing for the riders because they all put a lot of effort into it. I was just disappointed that they didn’t get out of it what they put in but that was down to bad luck.”
“The most important thing was to get the race environment right for the Worlds going forward, that was part A, that was achieved and that box was ticked.”
“Part B was getting a result, that didn’t come but if we keep the environment right and the riders keep preparing then we’ll get a result. We’re still new, so we’ll have more chances.”
“It was disappointing because of all the travelling and the effort of everyone but it was a good experience and we all got a lot out of it so we’ll keep moving on.”
Nugent will travel with travel to the track in Apeldoorn, Holland, with Irvine and Ryan next week and will meet up with the other Irish representative, Eoin Mullen there.
Those Championships run from October 18th-20th.
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