Ryan Mullen (Ireland) rides to the silver medal(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Ryan Mullen (Ireland)(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Ryan Mullen (Ireland) in time trial action(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
The podium: Ryan Mullen (Ireland), Campbell Flakemore (Australia) and Stefan Kueng (Switzerland)(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Ryan Mullen (Ireland) was narrowly beaten down to silver in the 2014 U23 World TT championships(Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)
Ryan Mullen missed out on the under 23 time trial title at least year’s World Championships by an agonisingly close 0.48 seconds. However the 21-year-old Irishman is hoping to go even better in Richmond after choosing to spend 2015 developing with the An-Post Chain Reactions team. He will be stepping up to WorldTour level next season with Cannondale-Garmin after signing a two-year contract and rode his first race with them as a stagiaire at the Tour of Britain, where Cyclingnews caught up with him to get his thoughts ahead of the Worlds.
Cyclingnews: What has it been like riding your first race with Cannondale-Garmin?
Ryan Mullen: It’s been pretty cool. It’s always a hard race but it’s another level to what I’m normally used to doing with a Continental team. So I’m finding my feet and everyone is really nice and there is good support staff around.
CN: You’ve ridden the Tour of Britain with An Post before, have you notice a difference riding it with a WorldTour team?
RM: One thing I’ve noticed more is that I get a bit more respect in the bunch and you kind of feel that you’ve got to work a little bit harder so that you don’t get dropped from the bunch.
Everything is so much more organised and the routine makes everything that I’ve done before look amateurish. It’s nice to know that you’ve got the best staff in the world and the best stuff recovery-wise to get you going for the next day.
CN: You’ve got the World Championships approaching, what are your thoughts going into them?
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RM; I’m at the Tour of Britain to help prepare for that and hopefully I can put in a ride similar to last year and maybe go half a second better.
CN: How frustrating was it losing out by such a small margin?
RM: I’ve made peace with it. It was pretty shit at the time but now I’m just the guy who is second.
CN: What are your thoughts on the time trial course?
RM: It’s to my liking, it’s pretty straightforward, it’s flatter than last year so hopefully I can do a good a ride there.
CN: Do you feel that having this step up in intensity and riding with a WorldTour team can give you a little push going in?
RM: I hope so. Just racing at this level in this race, regardless of what team that I’m on would have brought me on anyway so I’m hoping I can go better for it.
CN: Looking further into the future, when you step into Cannondale-Garmin full-time, what kind of things do you hope to be able to achieve?
RM: I want to keep hold of the whole TT thing and not throw that away, it’s something that I want to keep improving on and hopefully I can turn into a week-long GC rider, that’s the ultimate ambition. I’m still young though so we’ll see what happens.
Born in Ireland to a cycling family and later moved to the Isle of Man, so there was no surprise when I got into the sport. Studied sports journalism at university before going on to do a Masters in sports broadcast. After university I spent three months interning at Eurosport, where I covered the Tour de France. In 2012 I started at Procycling Magazine, before becoming the deputy editor of Procycling Week. I then joined Cyclingnews, in December 2013.
