Ryan Mullen has missed the gold medal in the U23 TT at the World Championships by 48 hundredths of a second.
Ryan Mullen has just missed out on capturing an historic win for himself and for Ireland at the World Road Championships in Spain; being beaten to the world title by only 48 hundredths of a second in the U23 time trial this afternoon.
He adds his magnificent Worlds silver medal to two bronzes in the U23 European Track Championships last year and a silver in the junior TT at the European Championships the previous year.
More recently, in June Mullen also took the U23 TT national title and senior and U23 road titles. And having set the third fastest time ever for a 10 mile TT on British roads twice in recent months, he went into today's test as a hot favourite.
Advertisement
As a 19-year-old last year and in his first year out of the juniors, Mullen was 7th in this race at the Worlds in Florence. Since then he has been heralded as a potential gold medal winner today.
Young Irishman Mullen, who rides for An Post-Chainreaction but is competing in Ponferrada for Ireland, was quickest through all of the time checks during the sodden 36.15km mainly flat race against the clock today.
In the end he clocked a time of 43 mins 50 seconds, which smashed the leading time of Reiss from Portugal, who had been the early leader and was fastest for a long time with a time of 44:09.
It quickly became clear once Mullen had finished and the other fancied riders starting to come home that the Australian Campbell Flakemore, 4th in this time trial last year, was the only one who might beat Mullen or even push him close.
And in the end he just beat the Irish rider by 48 hundredths of a second, having been 20 seconds down on him at the 23km mark.
Related News
The Australian had a carrot on the home straight, where he was catching the rider ahead of him; and but for that Mullen may be champion this evening.
Stefan Kung of Switzerland, the European U23 road and TT champion, was 3rd just 9.22secs off the gold medal.
More later.
The podium; Mullen with silver, Flakemore with gold and Kueng in the bronze medal position (Photo: Sirotti)
World Champs U23 Time Trial
1 Campbell Flakemore (Australia) 0:43:49.94
2 Ryan Mullen (Ireland) 0:00:00.48
3 Stefan Kueng (Switzerland) 0:00:09.22
4 Rafael Ferreira Reis (Portugal) 0:00:19.32
5 Maximilian Schachmann (Germany) 0:00:37.84
6 Jonathan Dibben (Great Britain) 0:00:38.28
7 Andreas Vangstad (Norway) 0:00:44.88
8 Louis Meintjes (South Africa) 0:00:48.36
9 Frederik Frison (Belgium) 0:01:07.22
10 James Oram (New Zealand) 0:01:09.57
11 Lukas Postlberger (Austria) 0:01:25.43
12 Nils Politt (Germany) 0:01:27.68
13 Viktor Manakov (Russian Federation) 0:01:28.62
14 Steven Lammertink (Netherlands) 0:01:38.56
15 Thery Schir (Switzerland) 0:01:44.31
16 Soren Kragh Andersen (Denmark) 0:01:44.42
17 Alex Kirsch (Luxembourg) 0:01:45.57
18 Juan Camacho Del Fresno (Spain) 0:01:46.03
19 Davide Martinelli (Italy) 0:01:55.32
20 Alexander Evtushenko (Russian Federation) 0:01:55.33
21 Mario Gonzalez Salas (Spain) 0:01:55.74
22 Jan Marcus Faaglum Karlsson (Sweden) 0:01:57.38
23 Robin Carpenter (United States Of America) 0:01:57.53
24 Scott Davies (Great Britain) 0:02:01.65
25 Ignacio Prado (Mexico) 0:02:02.28
26 Dion Smith (New Zealand) 0:02:05.42
27 Jose Luis Rodriguez (Chile) 0:02:06.43
28 Willem Jakobus Smit (South Africa) 0:02:09.83
29 Oleg Zemlyakov (Kazakhstan) 0:02:10.22
30 Viktor Okishev (Kazakhstan) 0:02:17.72
31 Ruben Pols (Belgium) 0:02:23.19
32 Tom Bohli (Switzerland) 0:02:24.75
33 Marlen Zmorka (Ukraine) 0:02:27.91
34 Gregor Muhlberger (Austria) 0:02:36.66
35 Taylor Eisenhart (United States Of America) 0:02:37.39
36 Miguel Angel Lopez (Colombia) 0:02:37.49
37 Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz (Poland) 0:02:37.62
38 Ioannis Spanopoulos (Greece) 0:02:40.64
39 Carlos Ramirez (Colombia) 0:02:56.88
40 Remi Cavagna (France) 0:02:58.82
41 Seid Lizde (Italy) 0:03:08.64
42 Facundo Lezica (Argentina) 0:03:12.95
43 Casper Von Folsach (Denmark) 0:03:22.33
44 Bruno Maltar (Croatia) 0:03:31.11
45 David Per (Slovenia) 0:03:33.48
46 Bruno Armirail (France) 0:03:54.61
47 Hugo Angel Velazquez (Argentina) 0:04:03.42
48 Anasse Ait El Abdia (Morocco) 0:04:06.57
49 Ahmet Orken (Turkey) 0:04:10.13
50 Abderrahmane Mansouri (Algeria) 0:04:34.30
51 Valens Ndayisenga (Rwanda) 0:04:38.33
52 Dmitriy Rive (Kazakhstan) 0:04:43.94
53 Salaheddine Mraouni (Morocco) 0:04:47.71
54 Pontus Kastemyr (Sweden) 0:04:48.16
55 Tural Isgandarov (Azerbaijan) 0:04:59.52
56 Adil Barbari (Algeria) 0:05:01.17
57 Jean Bosco Nsengimana (Rwanda) 0:05:04.25
58 Feritcan Samli (Turkey) 0:05:14.91
59 Pablo Cruz (Honduras) 0:06:01.42
60 Szabolcs Sebestyen (Romania) 0:06:29.81
61 Shern Mun Benedict Lee (Singapore) 0:07:21.47
62 Diego Hossfeldt (Qatar) 0:07:41.77
63 Victor Cartin (Republic of Moldova) 0:09:56.68
Topics
