Sixth place for the women's team pursuit in Munich

The Irish women's team pursuit squad of Lara Gillespie, Kelly Murphy, Mia Griffin and Alice Sharpe finished sixth at the European Championships in Munich after defeating Poland in the first round.

Completing the 4,000m team pursuit in a time of 4:25.487 was enough to defeat the Poles, but not good enough to reach the bronze final.

The quartet were able to take plenty of positives from their performance.

"Sixth is a good place to start at the Europeans; it's somewhere we can build on for the future and for the next Europeans which is coming close enough," Mia Griffin said afterwards

"We can go into the world with confidence from this, try and build and put some other countries behind us."

"It's always difficult, like you're trying to protect the riders behind you and take the team over as smoothly as possible which isn't so easy," Alice Sharpe added.

"I think Poland split into three groups so the catch was a bit stressful. That added extra distance to our turn and it just doesn't make the ride smooth."

Ireland's Team Pursuit squad react to finishing 6th at the European Championships