Worlds medals prove elusive but Downey defiant about future
Felix English and Mark Downey have had a brilliant season. The Worlds haven’t gone their way but they’ll be back.
By Brian Canty
The Irish track team have brought their World Championships campaign to a close in Hong Kong today. Mark Downey and Felix English secured the best result of the campaign with sixth in the Madison.
The gold and silver medallists from Cali and Los Angeles earlier this year were in at the very deep-end in what was their debut at this level.
And having qualified by virtue of their incredible results this season, Hong Kong proved a step too far after a long season.
The event was won by France, with Australia and Belgium taking silver and bronze.
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Downey reflected: “Today, all the nations had their A teams out there.
“All the guys who ride the 6-day events were there, especially with talk of this being on the programme for Tokyo.
“For us to be competing like that against those guys is really positive – we rode the perfect race and it was nice to be up in the last few sprints.
“We may not have a medal this year, but that time will come,” he said.
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Downey and English struggled with the early pace set by Australia who had 10 points racked up by the fifth sprint.
Their pairing of points race world champion Cameron Meyer and TT specialist Callum Scotson were on fire in the early stages.
But France came more and more into it and from sprints 6-13 they gathered points in each one.
Their duo of Morgan Kneisky and Benjamin Thomas surged ahead. Belgium too made their mark through Kenny de Ketele and Moreno de Pauw.
Downey and English finished with a flourish by scoring 1, 5 and 1 points in three of the last four sprints.
That was enough to see them finish on 12 points, the same as Switzerland and ahead of Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy.
“We really picked ourselves up after the last few days, where we just below par," said Downey.
“We felt we owed a good performance to everyone, and it was a nice positive way to end the week.
“It was a busy season for everyone, so it’s nice to go home with smiles on our faces.
“We weren’t on the podium, but to get sixth at the Worlds in our first year in the Madison is pretty good.”
Elsewhere, Lydia Gurley finished 15th in the points race while Keirin rider Shannon McCurley was 21st overall.
McCurley was fourth in her repechage round and that was not enough to qualify her through to the second round.
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