Ireland’s Lydia Gurley finished agonisingly close to a medal at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Glasgow today, with fourth place in the Women’s Scratch Race. Making her Track World Cup debut this weekend, Gurley has already shown immense talent finishing sixth in the Women’s Madison yesterday with Lydia Boylan.

From Athenry in Galway, Gurley was one of five riders to lap the field in the 40 lap Scratch Race, and just missed out on a medal on the finish line. In this event the first person over the line is the winner, so for endurance riders the advantage of taking a lap means that fewer riders are in contention for the medals.

The race was won by Elise Delzenne from France with Japan’s Minami Uwano taking silver. Bronze went to Russia’s Evgeniya Romanyuta, with Ireland in fourth place.

Gurley was happy with her result: “I enjoyed the race. The plan was to try and get away; it took a few laps but I made it with another rider [Uwano]. It was difficult to conserve energy as there were more attacks – in total five riders took a lap in separate groups. I was suffering by the end but I’m really happy with the result.”

In the Women’s Team Sprint Stewart and Moran qualified for the second round with a time of 36.146, half a second faster than the time they posted in the European Championships in October. In the second round, the bronze medalists Russia beat the Irish team, putting them in eighth place overall.

In the Women’s Omnium Boylan won two of the sprints in the final Points Race, but it was not enough to net a higher position than 15th place in the event in which she finished 6th at the European Championships in Paris last month.

This was the first Track World Cup in the 2016/2017 season, Ireland need to send a team to all four World Cups in order to qualify for the World Championships in Hong Kong, but they do not need to send a full team.

Next week will see an Irish Team compete in the second World Cup in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, from the 11-13 November.

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