McGlinchey sets sights on second gold medal in seven days

*Chris McGlinchey has taken big wins on the road but last weekend he was crowned Irish cyclocross champion and today he's the favourite to win another Irish title, this time in eRacing*

By Shane Stokes

One week after he took his first Irish senior championship medal by dominating the cyclo-cross nationals, Chris McGlinchey has the chance to take his second national title in seven days. McGlinchey will line out as one of ten male riders in the first-ever Cycling Ireland eRacing national championships and, on the basis of his cyclo-cross form, must be seen as the big favourite.

“It’s going to be cool, really interesting,” he told Stickybottle. “It’s cool to see them put on that event. I think there are only a few nations so far that have really adopted an eSports national championship, so it’s cool to see Cycling Ireland being forward thinking in that respect and putting it on.”

McGlinchey was in storming form in last Sunday’s cyclo-cross nationals in Palace Demesne, Armagh, finishing one minute and eight seconds clear of Sean Nolan (EvoPro Racing).

He was the early leader before being caught and passed by Nolan shortly before the halfway point. He lost ground when he changed his bike in the pits, but while Nolan looked strong and opened up what appeared to be a decisive lead, McGlinchey inched his way back up to him and then put in a powerful move on the penultimate lap.

It was his first win in the senior championships, and comes after second place in 2020 and third in 2017. Aside from the considerable motivation boost he got from the gold medal, the performance also shows he is in excellent form. Both aspects should fuel his confidence heading into Saturday’s eRacing event.

“My big target at this stage of the year was Sunday past, the cyclo-cross nationals,” he explained, talking about how he had approached things. “So it’s more of a B event for me. But definitely I am going to go to give it my best shot and hopefully come away with the win in that one as well.

“I’m quite fortunate that the eNationals are around the same time [as the cross nationals] because I haven’t had to adapt my training at all. And the training that I’ve been doing for cross definitely ties in, so I’ll be in good shape for it.”

Former world number one

ERacing is a relatively new disciple which got an unexpected boost because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although Zwift and other such platforms were already in existence for quite some time, the lockdowns caused by the virus meant that many cyclists were either stuck at home or unable to go further than a small distance from their homes.

WorldTour professionals competed in several events online, as did amateur riders in Ireland and around the globe. McGlinchey embraced the discipline and, at one point, was ranked world number one.

“That was back during the first lockdown,” he explained. “That’s all we had to do at that stage, so I really focused on it. And yeah, I managed to do enough racing on Zwift to become the number one ranked rider. That’s on a website called Zwift Power, it basically uses algorithms to work out points-based systems for results, depending on how many people have entered, how good they are, and things like that.

“I think it averages your best five results. I was only number one for a few weeks, because it changes so frequently, depending on how often you race. But it was it was still quite a quite a nice achievement.”

Much as that was good for his confidence, he said there was another, more important benefit.

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“At that point, the Zwift racing was something that was massively helpful for my mental health,” he said. “I had trained so hard over winter, lockdown happened, and then I had all this form and no races to go to. So it was it was nice to be able to just focus still on racing while not being able to race in real life.”

Cycling Ireland has been running both virtual races and training activities on the Zwift platform since the pandemic began. During summer 2019 a single event saw 1,900 people participate from their own homes, while last year a total of 21,000 people participated in either a CI-organised eRace or structured workout on Zwift. The federation said that at its peak one round of the CI Zwift Series had over 35,000 live stream views.

The qualification for this weekend’s eRacing national championships was held online at 10 am on December 18th, where riders from around the country competed in a bid to get through to the championships. The best riders from the men and women’s categories then went through to the finals, which will be run off on Saturday on Zwift’s New York Astoria Line 8 route. This is 34.5 kilometres in length and includes 423 metres of elevation.

The competing riders will all gather in the same location, O’Reilly Hall in UCD, where the eRacing championships will take place.

McGlinchey has had a busy buildup to the race; aside from competing in various cyclo-cross races and then last Sunday’s national championships, he also did an online Zwift race for his Spectra Wiggle p/b Vitus team on Monday evening.

“It was one of the Premier League races, and there are intermediate sprint points,” he explained. “So my plan was to try to get a couple of those for the team and then just chill at the end of the race. I managed to win the first sprint and was second in the second one, so it was not too bad.”

McGlinchey elaborated on what training he has been doing and the similarities between the two disciplines.

“In terms of preparation, it was definitely all for the cross nationals. But the training that you would do for each is probably quite similar, in terms of it being VO2 Max threshold-style efforts. And it’s usually a similar kind of duration as well. You’re probably find in a Zwift race that you would average out at a higher power because you’re constantly on the pedals, whereas you’ve got some running and coasting in cross. But yeah, the training demands are very similar.”

Simply put, the hard work he has put into reaching top cyclo-cross form should translate across into eRacing too. He'll hope that gives him the edge when battle commences on Saturday evening.