Ryan Mullen has stepped away from Cycling Ireland's track programme to concentrate on the road for the foreseeable future.
By Brian Canty
Ryan Mullen was the big name absent from the Irish U23 track team named for next week’s European Championships in Greece after deciding to take an indefinite break from the boards.
The An Post Chainreaction man has decided to park his track commitments for the summer so he can focus more on the road, with the upcoming European and World Championships in Estonia and the US his obvious targets.
The news will come as a big blow to the track squad, especially the team pursuit set-up as Mullen and Martyn Irvine had been their star riders.
The team had been hopeful of having both for the European Track Championships in Greece this week but that will not be the case.
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Though still only 20 years of age, it’s hard to see a situation where he would not return to the track at some point in the future but for now his focus will be on the road.
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Mullen is not the first rider to leave the squad as Dylan Foley has done so in the past also citing a preference for the road and finding the two were hard to combine.
Certainly a factor in Mullen’s decision was the hectic schedule he has had to endure since the beginning of last year, with a winter racing the UCI World Cups leading into the World Championships in February before the road season kicked off.
There followed road and track commitments all summer, culminating in his silver-medal winning performance at the UCI world time-trial championships in Spain last September.
But there was very little down-time after that, with more track camps in Majorca followed by UCI World Cups throughout the winter months, ending in February when he again rode the UCI World Championships in Paris.
The latter was his last race on the track and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
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