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The first of the Olympic cycling events got underway in Paris today. Ryan Mullen represented Team Ireland in the Men’s Road Cycling Time Trial.

A strong performance from Mullen, who was making his Olympic debut, saw him complete in a time of 37:57.16 to finish in 12th place. This is the best result ever recorded by an Irish athlete in this event.

In what was always set to be a highly competitive affair, Belgium filled two places on the podium. Remco Evenepoel won the Gold medal and Wout Van Aert claimed the Bronze medal. Filippo Ganna completed the podium, taking home Silver for Italy.

Weather conditions proved far from ideal, with rain persisting throughout the Women’s and Men’s Time Trial.

Speaking after the race Mullen said, “It was a slippery city centre circuit, it was just about managing risk and trying to deliver the power where it was feasible, feasible being a big underlined word there, because you couldn’t put power everywhere for risk of losing your backend or frontend.

“I did what I could, I took the risk where I felt I could, I backed off where I felt like it wasn’t worth taking the risk, because like I said, I didn’t want to come all the way to Paris, after 15 years in the making of getting here to lie down on a roundabout somewhere so being safe and taking the calculated risk was the most important thing today and you just deliver the best ride you could do in the safest way possible.”

The next cycling event takes place in a weeks’ time, on Saturday 3rd of August. Ben Healy joins Mullen, and the pair will compete in the Men’s Road Race.

Megan Armitage will make her Olympic debut on Sunday, 4th of August, competing in the Women’s Road Race.

Track action gets underway on Monday 5th of August, with the Women’s Team Pursuit competing in their qualifying round on Tuesday 6th of August. Lara Gillespie, Mia Griffin, Alice Sharpe and Kelly Murphy are making history as the first even Irish Women’s Track Team to qualify to compete in the Team Pursuit at the Olympic.

Gillespie and Sharpe will team up to compete in the Madison and Gillespie will also compete in the Omnium.