National Championships

Post date: Jun 26, 2017 6:23:11 PM

(By Shay O'Toole - Mon 26th June 2017)

Wexford was the venue for this year’s National Cycling Championships which were staged in the ‘Model County’ from Thursday, June 23rd to Sunday, June 25th.

Lakeside Wheelers had no representative at the TT events which were run off last Thursday evening. The men’s test against the clock was won by 2014 National Road Race champion, Ryan Mullen of Cannondale Drapac who pipped reigning champion, Team BMC’s, Nicolas Roche. Mullen rode the 34km route in a time of 40:48 with Roche trailing him by 15 seconds. The ladies competition was won by Eileen Burns from Ballymena.

After a very exciting race the new National champion is Ryan Mullen who was in the thick of all the important moves during the day so a well deserved victory and a second road race title for the Cannondale Drapac rider.

The combined Elite/U23 men’s race got underway at 11am on Sunday and featured several of the big hitters from across all levels of Irish professional cycling with Nicolas Roche (BMC Racing), Sam Bennett (BORA-hansghroe) and Ryan Mullen (Cannondale Drapac) representing the WorldTour riders. These were joined by some of the Pro-Continental and Continental based riders of which four-time champion Matt Brammeiere (Aqua Blue Sport) and Mullingar’s Damien Shaw (An Post Chainreaction) were amongst the overall race favourites. The race also contained the best U23 riders along with the cream of the crop of Irish amateur riders resulting in one of the strongest fields for many years.

Damien was riding in his 7th National Championships having first competed in 2011 in a Lakeside Wheelers jersey. Over the last 6 years he has an excellent record in this race finishing in 8th, 7th, 6th and 3rd before taking a spectacular victory in Omagh in 2015. However, 2017 was not to be his year as he was forced to abandon the race after 150kms due to the affects of a crash which occurred as the race negotiated a roundabout in the centre of Wexford town in the early stages. This led to him suffering from recurring cramp and pain so with the race gone up the road and an eye on his next race, the Belgian based Mullingar rider reluctantly pulled out.

Having won the National Time Trial & Road Race Champioships in 2014 & 2017,

Ryan Mullen is now a Multy double National Champion!