{"id":813482,"date":"2026-10-25T14:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/813482\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T14:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:02:18","slug":"obrien-withdraws-from-worlds-after-irish-team-pursuit-crash-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/813482\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Brien withdraws from Worlds after Irish team pursuit crash incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Aoife O’Brien has called time on her Worlds, and her season, after a crash on the team pursuit UCI World Track Championships in Shanghai, China<\/p>\n

Aoife O’Brien has called time on her UCI World Track Championships in Shanghai, China, and on her season, after crashing in the team pursuit during the qualification round.<\/p>\n

It is an unfortunate end to 2026 for the Westmeath rider, who has competed on the road this year with DAS-Hutchinson, suffering highs and lows through the campaign.<\/p>\n

O’Brien crashed in road race action in Belgium in April and though she soldiered on, and went to Asia for two UCI Track World Cups, she was forced to withdraw from the racing in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

She then travelled home for treatment, rather than going with the rest of the team for the seconds World Cup in Malaysia, eventually being diagnosed with a broken shoulder.<\/p>\n

O’Brien did not race again on the road for another three months, which put a hole in her season. However, she came good, at home and in Europe, before the incident this week in China.<\/p>\n

While she was scheduled to ride the elimination race at the Worlds today, she opted out after the team pursuit crash resulted in head impact.<\/p>\n

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“After a touch of wheels in the last lap of our team pursuit yesterday, I took a bit of a bang,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Although I was cleared this morning on medical grounds by the doctor, with my history of concussion I think we have made the right call to leave racing tonight.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a shame to end the season like this but better safe than sorry. Kudos to the girls for jumping back up for a second ride and getting a time down on the board.”<\/p>\n

She added she would be wearing “sunglasses for the foreseeable” to cover a black eye.<\/p>\n

On the upside this year, O’Brien raced very strongly after coming back from the broken shoulder she sustained in the spring.<\/p>\n

She won a stage at R\u00e1s na mBan last month and held the leader’s jersey. She also claimed victory in Belgium, at the Langestraat Koerse-Fiitz GP Schoonaarde one-day race, in August; just one among a series of strong results in Belgium.<\/p>\n

O’Brien (22) also won four Irish titles in one weekend at the National Track Championships in Dublin, taking the honours in the omnium, individual pursuit, points race and scratch race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aoife O’Brien has called time on her Worlds, and her season, after a crash on the team pursuit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-813482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}