U23 Irish Euro Champs teams named & panel unveiled for Continental assignments

Current National U23 TT Champion, Conor Dunne will lead the Irish team at the U23 European Road Championships and will take in both the TT and road race in the Czech Republic.

Cycling Ireland has named a total of ten U23 riders for international racing and training assignments in the coming months, while teams for the European Road Championships and European Track Championships have also been revealed.

In the panel of ten is a mix of U23 riders based in Ireland also racing permanently overseas. Ryan Mullen (IG Sigma Sport) will be the busiest of the riders on the basis of the teams named so far, with the 18-year-old the only athlete named in the line-ups for both the European road championships and the separate track championships.

First up are those U23 European Track Championships in Portugal from July 10th to 1^4th. Ryan Mullen will form part of a two-man team, with emerging sprinter Eoin Mullen the other man named.

Both are very exciting prospects, with Eoin Mullen training full time at the UCI’s World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland. He already has some elite World Cup meetings and the elite World Track Championships under his belt, and having smashed his sprint PBs this year it will be very interesting to see where he is when measured against the best U23s on the boards in Europe.

He will go in the sprint events at the Euros, while Ryan Mullen with take part in, as yet unspecified, ‘endurance events’. He already has a silver medal in his trophy cabinet from the Junior European TT Championships last year and was 9^th in the TT at the Junior Road Worlds last September.

He has spent his time road racing in this, his first year as an elite professional. However, his 4^th place last weekend in the British 25 mile TT championships – an event open to all nationalities – shows he has not neglected his testing.

The Irish team will be led by Eoin Mullen, with Cycling Ireland saying Ryan Mullen is traveling to Portugal to mainly gain track experience at this level.

Just four days after the racing on the track concludes, the U23 European Road Championships get underway in the Czech Republic; running from July 18^th to 21^st.

Belgian-based Conor Dunne (VL Technics-Abutriek) leads the team into those championships after winning the opening stage in the recent An Post Rás and taking the first yellow jersey. He later crashed in that race, fracturing his elbow. But he is expected to be fully fit for the Euros.

He rides the TT there, along with Ryan Mullen. Cycling Ireland believes they can both place in the top 10 in the test.

That duo will then be joined for the road race by Jack Wilson (An Post-Chainreaction), along with one other rider to be confirmed after the National Road Race Championships in Carlingford, Co Louth, the weekend after next.

Wilson is in his second year as an U23 and is already quite experienced, having been selected to ride the U23 Worlds last year. Since then he has become a member of the Belgian based An Post-Chainreaction team.

While the Euro road and track teams were unveiled today, the U23 team for the World Road Championships in Florence in September will not be named until mid August, by which time it will be clear how many riders Ireland has qualified.

However, Cycling Ireland has named a panel of ten riders who will travel to the Continent as part of the national set-up for four weeks in July-August. The riders will take in both track and road racing and training in Belgium.

Cycling Ireland CEO Geoff Liffey said: “I am pleased to see the progression of the junior riders to the next level and the continued progression of the European based riders. There will be strong competition within this U23 group over the coming years as they move into a key developmental phase which will play a large part in determining their future in the sport.”

U23 Panel for Belgium in July-August

Conor Dunne (VL Technics-Abutriek)

Conor McIlwaine (Errigal CC)