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Irish Paralympic Cycling Squad back on medal winning form at Paralympic Track World Cup in Manchester and Irish squad sweeps the boards at Paralympic Grand Prix of Wales, May 2009

May 2009

Irish Paralympic Cycling Squad back on medal winning form at Paralympic Track World Cup in Manchester

Just 0.074 of a second is all that separated the Irish Female Tandem pairing of Catherine Walsh and her pilot Caroline Ryan from the gold medal in the 3km Pursuit at the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester on May 22nd. The girls were drawn to ride off for the gold medal against the current World and Olympic Champion British cyclist Aileen McGlynn and her pilot Vicky Begg in what turned out to be the closest fought race of the event.
The British girls started out strongly and gained a lot of ground in the first lap but slowly and surely the Irish girls pegged back the time until nothing seemed to separate them when going into the last lap and the electronic timing was needed to show the crowd who had actually taken the title, which was won by the British bike by a whisker. The winning time was 3:44.355 and Catherine & Caroline's time was 3:44.429. A truly great performance from Catherine and Caroline which is all the more awesome considering Caroline has only recently transferred from international rowing to cycling and was flown in from Dublin early in the morning to replace Joanna Hickey who picked up an injury during warm up for the 1Km Time Trial on Friday.
But the success did not end there, the Irish Male Tandem pairing of Michael Delaney and his pilot Con Collis secured double Bronze medals for Ireland when setting new Irish Records in both the 200m Sprint Competition and the 4kn Individual Pursuit Competition. In the Bronze medal Match Sprint ride against the tandem from the Netherlands they won two straight matches responding to every attack and even when the Dutch tandem slipped inside them at one stage, they managed to round them again and left them in their wake as they sprinted for the line. The new Irish Record time was set at 11.367. The British took both Silver and Gold.
Just a short time earlier Michael and Con set a new Irish Record time of 4:40.414 in the 4Km Pursuit, a full 4 seconds better than the old record and good enough to secure a second Bronze Medal for the Irish duo.
Other good performances from the Irish Squad included 5th place finish by Male LC1 cyclist Cathal Miller in the 4km Pursuit in a time of 5:00.748 and 8th place in the 1km Time Trial in a time of 1:12.026.
CP4 Cyclist Enda Smyth finished in 6th place in the 3km Pursuit in a time of 3:58.430 and in 14th place in the 1km Time Trial in a time of 1:15.438.
In her first time competing at Paralympic level Tyrone cyclist Ann McFarland put in two fine performances to clinch 4th place in the 3km Pursuit in a time of 3:44.429 and 5th place in the 500m Time Trial in a time of 46.045.

Irish squad sweeps the boards at Paralympic Grand Prix of Wales

Hot on the heels of their medal winning and record setting performances at last week's Paralympic Track World Cup in Manchester, the Irish Paralympic Cycling Squad members were back to their winning ways finishing in first place in three of the four categories they competed in and second in the fourth category at the International Grand Prix of Wales in Newport on Sunday 24th May 2009.
The event was run as a Track Omnium with points up for grab in the 200m sprint, the 500m/1km Time Trial and the 3km/4km Individual Pursuit.
Cathal Miller was in flying form in the LC1 Male competition with three straight wins guaranteeing him his first big win of 2009. His time in the 4km Pursuit was 4:55.014 just 2 seconds off his record set in Beijing so we can look forward to that record falling further in the near future.
Female Tandem pairing of Catherine Walsh and Caroline Ryan set their second Irish Record of the week this time in the 1km Time Trial which they won in a time of 1:12.980 almost a full second better that the time recorded by Catherine in Beijing. A further win in the 3km Pursuit set them up nicely to regain the title won by Catherine and Joanna Hickey in 2008.
Not too left out, Enda Smyth competing in the CP4 Category set a new Irish Record of 1:15.025 in the 1km Time Trial and also set a new Irish Standard time of 5:24.051 when winning the 4km Pursuit. The UCI has decided 4km will be the Pursuit distance for CP4 riders in the future up from the 3km distance used in previous competitions.
Female LC1 rider Ann McFarland riding in only her second Paralympic competition put in three good rides to finish in second place behind the USA rider.
Only the USA Team who won four events outscored the Team from Ireland at this fourth running of the event in Newport.
We hope the whole squad can now build on these performances in preparation for the World Road Championships in Italy in September and the World Track Championships in Manchester next November.

Denis Toomey
Irish Paralympic Cycling Manager