Ireland see off Britain to win bronze at the European track cycling championships

The Irish women’s team pursuit squad raced to a superb bronze medal at the European track championships in Grenchen, Switzerland, on Wednesday evening, beating the Britain team in the bronze-medal final.

They recorded a time of 4 minutes 21.264 seconds, with Britain three and a half seconds slower with 4:24.904.

The quartet of Emily Kay, Kelly Murphy, Alice Sharpe and Mia Griffin had finished third fastest in the qualifying round of the women's team pursuit on Tuesday, and then set a new national record in the first round earlier on Wednesday.

Their time of 4:21.202 seconds beat the national record of 4:21.386 set at the track world championships in February 2020. Three out of the four riders from Wednesday's squad had set the earlier record, namely Murphy, Griffin, and Sharpe. The fourth rider, Lara Gillespie, is on a break from racing and has been replaced by Kay at the European championships.

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The Irish riders had a psychological edge heading into the bronze-medal final despite a vastly greater level of track success for Britain over several decades. Their time from the session earlier on Wednesday was almost a second faster than the 4:22.048 set by the British, and the team was also faster in Tuesday’s qualifiers.

The result is a further boost for Irish track cycling. In June of this year the squad won the women’s team pursuit in the second round of the 2021 Track Cycling Nations Cup in St Petersburg, Russia. The country still has no indoor velodrome, but did have the reassurance on Monday that a commitment to build a combined velodrome and badminton centre was reaffirmed in the newly-launched National Development Plan 2021-2030.

Irish riders currently have to travel to Mallorca to train at the indoor velodrome there, putting the country at a disadvantage to other nations. Britain has six indoor velodromes, as well as 20 outdoor tracks. The island of Ireland has only three outdoor tracks, namely those in Dublin, Kanturk and Belfast.

Earlier in the evening, JB Murphy took a fine fifth in the men’s points race. He finished level on points with the rider in fourth.