CYCLING PARALYMPIC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS:FOLLOWING LAST weekend's first World Cup in Manchester, at which several Irish riders competed, the paralympic squad have headed to the same venue for the track world championships.
The An Post-backed riders have had some strong performances this year, and are hoping to set new standards in the velodrome.
“The whole squad are in good shape and we expect to see a number of Irish records broken over the next three days,” said team manager Denis Toomey.
“Having come so close to securing medals for Ireland at the Road World Championships in Italy recently, we are quietly optimistic that we can go one step further and produce the goods here in Manchester. Top nations from all over the world are here and we will be giving them a good run for their money.”
The contest starts today and runs until Sunday. There are two individual riders and three tandem teams, and all will do the 1km time trial and individual pursuit for their categories.
Cathal Miller and Enda Smyth will compete in the LC1 and CP4 categories respectively, while the pairing of Michael Delaney and Con Collis plus Andrew Fitzgerald and Paul Giblin are in the male blind and visually impaired competitions.
Delaney and Collis will also go in a third event, the tandem sprint contest. Their goal is to equal or better the double bronze medal performance achieved at the World Cup last May.
Female tandem riders Catherine Walsh and Caroline Ryan have similar goals. They too took a World Cup medal last May and will aim high in the 1km TT and 3km pursuit events.
Meanwhile, Matt Brammeier, who recently declared for Ireland, was best of the squad at last weekend’s elite World Cup in Manchester. He finished fourth in Sunday’s final of the scratch race, making a strong improvement on the 12th place finish he registered in heat one.
National road race champion Heather Wilson won her heat in the women’s points race, but had to be satisfied with 14th in the final. It was nevertheless a strong track debut for her, and shows good promise. The Irish squad was 13th in the team pursuit, clocking up a time of four minutes 20.489 seconds in the qualifiers.
PARACYCLING TRACK WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS (Manchester, today):Cathal Miller, 4km pursuit; Enda Smyth, 1km TT; male tandem 1km TT. Tomorrow:Cathal Miller, 1km TT; Enda Smyth, 4km pursuit; male tandem, 4km pursuit, women tandem 1km TT. Sunday:Women tandem 3km pursuit, male tandem sprint.
Fixtures: Friday-Sunday:Ulster youth camp, Lisnaskea. Sunday:Super Cross Cup round 2, Tymon Park. Westport MTB race, Knockranny Woods. First races at noon. Gerald Brannigan memorial cycle, starts at 10.30 am in Clonee
