Strong Irish squad hunt medals at Paracycling World Championships

Colin Lynch is a big medal hope for Ireland at the UCI Paracycling World Championships in the Netherlands.

Ireland has a total of six riders competing across 10 events in this weekend’s UCI Paracycling Track World Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.

Colin Lynch is first up tomorrow morning when he goes in the men’s C2 1k time-trial and he’ll know he must hit the ground running.

Because there are no qualification rounds it’s a straight shootout where the fastest three get medals. He’ll be followed in the C3 event by Galway man Eoghan Clifford.

In the afternoon the two tandem bikes will be in action; Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal in the women’s B 1km time-trial and the new pairing of Peter Ryan and Damien Shaw in the men’s equivalent.

Galway Bay CC man Eoghan Clifford won two gold medals on the road at the World Championships in the US last year. He’s since made the transition to track and will be looking for more big performances when he goes in the 1k TT, the 3k Pursuit and the Scratch Race.

Cycling Ireland’s coach Neil Delahaye said the competition to make the squad gives him belief they can do well over the coming days.

“I’m happy with how people are going,” he said.

“We’ve worked fairly intensively and you can see now riders starting to freshen up and there’s that extra zip in their legs, so it’s very positive.

“They’re feeling good and looking like they’ll have the speed we’ve developed.”

Delahaye said there’s the potential for medals in the team but warned the competition makes that very difficult.

“The main expectation is that everyone performs to the best of their ability and if they do that there’s the potential to get towards that podium,” he added.

“For me it’s just about delivering what we’ve been rolling out in training one more time.

“With the track it’s very intense, without any margin for error, so we try to focus on what we’ve been training to do.

"And I’m happy they’re in good enough shape and will get the best out of themselves.

“Obviously the stars need to align a little bit to medal, they need to deliver the performance on the day but they all have that capacity.”

The Irish Paracycling team that won four medals – two of them gold – at the Worlds in South Carolina last September. That was on the road but they should still give a very good account of themselves on the track over the next four days in the Netherlands. (Photo: Jean Baptiste – Sportsfile)

Big medal hopes will be Damien Shaw and Peter Ryan, the former piloting the Tipperary man in the 4km pursuit qualifiers on Saturday.

Colin Lynch should also go well in the 3k pursuit.

“You’d have to say Colin is in good form and is a consistent performer when it comes to the big events," said Delahaye.

“I know he’s going to push hard for a medal ride-off in the pursuit.

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“The pursuit is where we’ll have our best results and Colin will be in good shape there,” said Delahaye.

Lynch admitted he’ll be happy to get to a medal ride-off in the pursuit, which takes place on Friday.

“I feel very good about it,” he said.

“I’ve trained very hard this year and the form is very good right now.

“I won’t be racing for the podium in the 1k time-trial tomorrow because I don’t want to risk giving away a medal in my key event by going too deep in my weaker one.

“It should be a great championships; the track here is good and the preparation has been spot on.

“World Championships medals are hard to come by and the competition gets better every year – but I’d be very disappointed to not at least have the chance to ride for a medal.”

Ireland has done extremely well in paracycling over the years, both on the road and the track.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics they qualified four bikes and had three top five finishes while setting seven national records.

And four years later they qualified a record seven bikes for the London 2012 Games, where they won two gold, two bronze and one silver medal.

They’re very much on track for next year’s Games in Rio de Janeiro but this weekend is a crucial barometer of how they’re progressing.

In last year’s World Championships in the US they continued to excel with Eoghan Clifford winning two gold medals - in the road race and time-trial - in what were his debut Championships.

Full Irish schedule