Ryan Mullen, far right, has taken a bronze medal at the U23 European Track Championships in Portugal this evening.
After finishing third in the qualifying rounds of the individual pursuit at the U23 European Track Championships in Portugal today, Ryan Mullen has won his bronze medal ride off this evening.
The IG Sigma Sport professional may only be in his first year out of the junior ranks, but he showed he has a cool head to match his undisputedly strong engine in finishing off the job this evening on the track in Anadia.
He started quicker than his French rival this evening and in the end had almost three seconds to spare, a huge winning margin over the 4km race distance.
Mullen established an early lead over Julien Morice, with a 1.4 second advantage after the first kilometre. And he extended his lead over the following laps.
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In the third kilometre, Morice began to close the gap. But a strong final kilometre by Mullen secured the bronze medal by almost 3 seconds.
Speaking from the velodrome, Cycling Ireland head coach Brian Nugent said: “It is brilliant that Ryan went out and repeated the fantastic performance from this morning. He kept pulling away from the French guy, and when he started responding, Ryan pulled away again in the final kilo."
"This is a fantastic result for Ryan, who is in his first year as an under 23 rider. We are all delighted here, job done for today.”
His winning of a bronze medal will bolster the Cycling Ireland programme to develop young rides.
A number of strong juniors from last year have become very promising U23 riders this season. And some very good youth riders from 2012 are already dominating the junior ranks; as Eddie Dunbar’s and Mark Downey’s very strong 1-2 in the Junior Tour demonstrates.
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However, it is perhaps disappointing that Cycling Ireland limited its team at these championships to two riders, especially with a number of good track men in the U23 international set up who would have benefited from the taking in a major championships.
Man of the moment Mullen has proven a very good bet for his trade team this year, riding very strongly in the biggest one day races on the domestic scene in the UK and taking the U23 National TT title in Carlingford, Co Louth, last month.
The 18-year-old was in Dublin for the Irish International Track GP at Sundrive Rd on Saturday, breaking Martyn Irvine’s stadium record in the 4km pursuit by 10 seconds.
It was an eye watering time considering Irvine’s status as a world class rider at elite level, having won gold and silver at the Track World Championships already this year.
Mullen had already medalled at a major championships before today, taking silver at the Junior European TT Championships last year in a season which he ended with 9th at the Junior World TT Championships.
This evening he went head-to-head with Julien Morice after the Frenchman finished 4th in the qualifying round this afternoon, just one place behind the Irishman.
Stefan Kung of Switzerland was fastest in the qualifiers by a long way; clocking 4:20.073, a massive 3.738secs quicker than Alexander Evtushenko of Russia.
Mullen – posting 4:24.559 – was seven tenths of a second slower than the Russian in qualifying . However, he had nearly three tenths of a second to spare over Morice and so went into the bronze medal ride off as favourite.
Kung took the title this evening after seeing off his Russian rival in the gold medal ride off.
