Irvine notches up “best ever” performance at Euro Track Champs despite crash

Martyn Irvine has put to good use his recent block of altitude training in the US by taking an impressive fifth place in the omnium at the European Track Championships.

He missed out on a bronze medal by just four points. The title was claimed by Great Britain’s Ed Clancy.

Irvine, a London 2012 hopeful, overcame a crash in the elimination race on the Apeldoorn velodrome in Holland on Saturday evening and a two-hour hospital visit that night to bounce back in great style yesterday, Sunday.

He won the scratch race in the afternoon in emphatic style, lapping the field. That bumped him up to second in the overall standings, into the silver medal position, with only one of the event’s six races remaining; the 1km TT.

However, he was unable to repeat his heroics of the scratch race and finished eight in the 1km TT. That result saw him slip down to 5^th position in the final overall results.

Cycling Ireland high performance track coach, Brian Nugent said while Irvine was clearly in great shape, his track skills had also improved of late to a world class standard.

“He’s doing things like using the banking more to gain momentum at certain times, rather than winding up the gear with sheer power every time and taking it out of his legs,” Nugent said.

He believed the result at the weekend was Irvine’s best ever.

“He crashed on Saturday but he got back in and with the adrenalin kicking in he got eight in that race; not every rider would have got back in and got a result.”

Nugent said while Irvine suffered bruising and swelling to a quad muscle and was forced to spend two hours being checked out in hospital on Saturday night, he didn’t let the disruption get to him mentally.

In the end, Irvine was only a whisker away from taking a medal home for Ireland from the championships, finishing on 39 points after the six events.

The gold and silver medallists – GB’s Clancy and Bryan Coquard of France – both finished on 33 points, while third placed Elia Viviani on 35 points.

However, Irvine’s fifth overall placing combined with his impressive win in the scratch race for what was arguably the best result of his career to date.

He took a fine An Post Ras solo stage win back in May, but with the race to qualify for the track at London Olympics now very much underway, his performance over the weekend was achieved against some very good riders all battling hard for Olympic qualification points.

If Irvine can repeat that kind of form in the two World Cup meetings before Christmas – starting with the meeting in Astana in two weeks – he will put himself in a very good position to qualify Ireland for the omnium in London.

Irvine needs to be in the top eight in the European omnium standings next April when the World Championships in Australia conclude to have qualified for London.

He was 12^h in that ranking going into the Euros and the points he picked up there should move him up by at least one or two places.

The new European rankings will be published as early as today, Monday.

While David O’Loughlin has come out of track retirement to challenge Irvine for a place in the omnium at the Olympics, on the basis of Irvine’s showing in Apeldoorn O’Loughlin will have his work cut out for him.