Orla Walsh goes close to personal best at World Track Championships in Paris

Orla Walsh has said she is satisfied with her showing at the World Track Cycling Championships in Paris, with the Irish sprinter making it through to the last 16 finals before being beaten by British rider Sophie Capewell.

Walsh has made solid progress since changing from a track endurance programme to focusing on the sprint events. She qualified for her first World Track Championships this year and recorded a time of 11.079 seconds in the qualifiers on Thursday afternoon. This was just over a tenth of a second off the 10.9 she recorded at the European Track Championships in August.

Walsh placed 26th and advanced to the next round, where Capewell emerged best. The latter had qualified seventh quickest and so was always likely to have the edge.

“I’m happy enough with how I performed,” said Walsh. “The 11.0 is not far off my PB time anyway. It’s been quite a long season, I’ve been improving with each race.

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“There obviously comes a point where you need to take a step back and just train. I’m happy enough with the time, it was pretty much close to what I was doing in training anyway. So it was in and around what I was expecting.”

Walsh had said on Monday that she had broken her personal best for the flying 100 metres in training and was hopeful that she would do that in competition.

“It would have been nice to go faster again than my PB, but there’s always next year,” she said. “I was up against Sophie Capewell who is a lot quicker than me. I just focused on trying to be observant, trying to keep the pace, to deliver a decent match sprint technically. She came around me at the end, but I gave it a good bash.”

The finals of the sprint event will take place on Friday evening. Walsh is next in action on Saturday.

“I have the 500 [metre time-trial] as well, which is nice. I like the 500. That is just full gas out of the gate. It would be nice to do a PB time there. I don’t know where the legs are at with the 500, to be honest. It isn’t an Olympic event so I was focusing on the sprint, but it will just be another race in the legs and we will see how we go. I will try to enjoy it.”

Alice Sharpe put in a solid showing in the women’s elimination race, where victory went to the Belgian rider Lotte Kopecky, who beat Rachele Barbieri of Italy and Jennifer Valente of the USA.

Sharpe finished 11th out of the 24 competitors in the race, continuing on from her ninth-place finish in Wednesday’s team pursuit.

Emily Kay will be the sole competitor from the team on Friday, contesting the multi-race Omnium.

Meanwhile, a strong international and national field will compete in the world-ranked Cross Clonmel event this weekend.

The C2-ranked event takes place in Powerstown Park, and will feature competitors from Britain, France, Germany, the USA, Portugal and Spain, as well as many strong Irish riders.

The visitors include the past world under-23 championship bronze medallist Anna Kay of Britain and her compatriot, current national champion Thomas Mein.

Irish riders include past men’s national champions such as Seán Nolan, Darnell Moore, David Conroy and Robin Seymour, 2022 women’s national championship silver medallist Darcey Harkness (VC Glendale), junior champions Hannah McClorey and Liam O’Brien plus many others.

Racing begins on Saturday with underage competitions plus a support race. Sunday will see the elite men’s and women’s events take place plus those for juniors and masters riders.