With the first half of the 2011 season already establishing itself as one of the best in the Cycling Clubs history, the success has continued into the latter part of the season.

The club picked up the Leinster A2 team gold medal and the A2 individual gold medal for Ciaran O’Conluain at the Leinster Championships.

The Provincial Road championships are one of the biggest races on the Irish racing Calendar and UCD had high hopes going into it on all fronts with Colm Cassidy looking to continue his amazing run of success. In the A2 event the successful team included Ciaran, Gavin, Mike and Fiachra and in the A3 race we had Ian and Rob looking at the individual prizes.

The main race started off very fast with everyone wanting to get into the early move. After riding flat out for 45 mins it still hadn’t been able to get away despite the constant attempts of UCD’s Colm Cassidy. Things didn’t settle down much after that with everyone trying to get away on the final 3km uphill finishing circuit with the bunch being greatly reduced each of the 4 times up it. On the final lap of this 105km race UCD knew they had a great chance of the A2 team Gold.

With three A1 riders getting away with 10km to go things started to get tactical in the bunch with races within the race going on. Colm was looking for a high placing and the UCD A2 group looking for that team prize which they won by having three riders crossing the line in the fastest time ahead of some very strong other contenders. In doing so Ciaran out sprinted a Navan rider on the line to take the Leinster Gold medal and the biggest personal result for him so far.

In the A3 race Ian and Rob looked to build some form for the upcoming stage race in Mullingar where Ian performed excellently in 2010 by winning the A4 stage race there. UCD will hope to continue this great run of success in that race and in the coming weeks as the big stage races come thick and fast.