Darragh Zaidan salutes the crowd after claiming the gold medal in the 4k individual pursuit at the elite national championships at Sundrive Road over the weekend. The Arcane Cycling Team man got the better of UCD-Fitzcycles.ie pair Con Collis and Eoin Morton. (Photo courtesy Arcane Cycling Team)
By Brian Canty
Darragh Zaidan was one of the big winners at the elite national track championships at the weekend, taking gold in the individual pursuit and silver in the scratch race.
In the former, Zaidan (Arcane Cycling team) trailed Collis with two laps remaining but produced a superb late burst to win by less than two seconds.
He’s a former scratch and individual pursuit junior champion but as he was based in France for a number of years where he raced on the road, 2014 was the first year he actually competed in the elite nationals.
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Back then he took silver in the omnium and bronze in the team pursuit, IP and scratch so to win gold for the first time meant an awful lot.
“It’s been a target ever since I rode as a junior,” he said.
“Last year was up and down with illness and injury so I put all my eggs in the one basket – the elite track nationals – which didn’t go so well, even though I did take silver and a few bronzes.
“So to finally win gold is, in a word, overwhelming.
“To see all of the hard work put in by myself, Brendan Whelan and my coach Kyleigh Manners pay off with an outdoor personal best is hard to put in to words.
“I took silver in the omnium (national champs) in June, sixth in the keirin and a hard fought silver yesterday in the scratch race but I’d trade them all for the gold and my first elite national individual pursuit title I won.”
He now plans to take a short break before starting back into the winter track season which begins next month with an international track meet in Barcelona.
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