The Irish team concluded its UCI World Track Championships in Paris yesterday with a mixed day. Kelly Murphy took a fine 7th place in the individual pursuit, breaking her national record, while the madison duo of Mia Griffin and Alice Sharpe were caught up in a crash early in the contest and faced an uphill battle from that point. Orla Walsh was in action in the 500m TT and did not advance beyond qualifying.
Murphy's result was the best for the Irish team over the last few days in Paris while the team pursuit line-up - Murphy, Sharpe, Lara Gillespie and Emily Kay - also took 9th; a solid ride. However, while Murphy was justifiably very happy with her individual pursuit ride yesterday, she also pointed to an ever more competitive international track scene where to even stand still riders must improve.
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Murphy set a time of 3:25.424 in qualifying, almost a second faster than her previous Irish record of 3:26.362 but said such a time was perhaps not as significant now in the context of international racing as it might have been a few years ago.
“I’m satisfied with that ride," she said. "When I started out track racing 3.25 was a really competitive time and I knew that I had the numbers on the road anyway to compete with that so it was career goal, if you like, to get that time. But now the game's changed, and everyone's getting faster and faster.
“It’s a solid time and a solid outing on the day that everyone wants to do a good time, so I’m satisfied. But to be competitive now you've got to start chipping away at other things. The game has moved on.
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“I’m delighted (with the 7th place), because you can use the team pursuit as a proxy before you get up to the Individual Pursuit. There were some fast girls there today so just to be in the top half I thought I’d be satisfied; I don’t think I can ask for more than 7th, I think that’s a solid outing.”
In the madison, the race was halted for periods due to crashes and when some of the lighting failed inside the Saint-Quentine-en-Yvelines velodrome. Griffin got caught up in a crash early in the race, which undermined the cause of the two riders, who have their best season on the road this year.
“It was a pretty ferocious pace, and it wasn’t helped by when I think the lights broke and they neutralised the race," said Sharpe. "Everyone was still going full gas and during that time Mia got caught up in a crash, so we were just on the backfoot after that; not an ideal start to the race.
"It’s one of those races that even if you do well in it there’s always areas to improve in. We definitely are hungry to improve on this performance.”
Griffin said that she and Sharpe had “spent a lot of the race just chasing and trying to get back in contention and up there".
"It was a really brutal race but we gave it everything that we had. We have a lot to do, learn and experience to gain in this event. I think by doing a lot of smaller events and building up that we can really improve,” she said.
