Devins wins Gold at Nationals
THE track cycling National Championships for youth riders was held in Sundrive park, Crumlin recently.
Representing Yeats Country Cycling Club was Matthew Devins.
A rider who only recently took up this style of racing in the last 4 weeks.
The big difference in this style of racing is the riders have a fixed gear meaning they only have one gear and they have to keep pedalling and use the banking on the track to slow down or help them speed up, as they have no brakes to slow themselves down.
The track is 460 metres long with a banking.
It is an out door track (Velodrome). As Ireland does not have indoor Velodrome.
The National Youth Championships has 3 events, a sprint, a 500 metre time trial and a scratch race which is the same as a road race but shorter.
First up for Matthew was the sprint. This race starts with all riders doing 1 lap of the track and sprinting the last 200metres.
The last 200 metres is timed with the first 8 riders qualifying for the final races.
They then have 3 sprints against each other with the winner of 2 sprints going through to the next round.
The riders are then paired up with the fastest against the slowest qualifier.
Matthew did a time of 12.92 seconds which was the fastest time of the day. This put him straight into the quarter final.
Matthew sailed through all the rounds until he met Chris Donald team Madigan Belfast.
Chris took the first sprint with Matthew taking the 2nd, which meant a final sprint to decide the gold medal.
In a tight sprint Chris edged out Matthew to take gold.
Next up was the 500 metre time trial. Each rider had to sprint around the track to record the fastest time.
Chris was the first rider off and recorded a great time of 38.40 seconds.
Next up was Ooran Doogan Power House Sport Belfast he recorded a time of 39.40 seconds,with none of the remaining riders getting close.
It was up to Matthew to try and beat these great times as he was the last rider to start.
Matthew flew around the track in 38.60 seconds, to just finish 200s of a second behind Chris.
The final race was the scratch race which was 12 laps of the track just under 6kms.
This race started very fast with lots of attacking.
Matthew was first to get any kind of gap after 4 laps but was brought back after 2 laps out in front.
Within a lap of being brought back Matthew attacked again this time he was powering away.
Matthew sailed home with over half a lap of the track in hand to a fantastic win and his first National Championship.
Ooran Doogan was 2nd with Ciaran Dixon Team McConvey Cycles 3rd.
It was a super day for Matthew with a Gold and 2 Silver medals to bring back to Sligo.