Solid showings from Orla Walsh and Alice Sharpe at Track World Cycling Championships

Orla Walsh reached the last 32 in the women’s sprint and Alice Sharpe was 11th in the elimination race as Ireland's Track World Cycling Championships continued in Paris.

Walsh successfully reached the 1/16 Finals with a strong qualifying time of 11.079 seconds – less than 0.2 seconds off the national record she set at the European Championships in August.

In the next round she faced Great Britain’s Sophie Capewell - who qualified with a time of 10.492s - in the 1/16 Finals, but narrowly missed out in the sprint by 0.126s.

Walsh said: "I’m happy enough with how I performed, the 11.079s is not far off my PB time anyway. It’s been quite a long season and I’ve been improving with each race so there comes a point where you need to take a step back and train."

"It (the time) was pretty much close to what I was doing in training anyway, so it was what I was expecting. It would’ve been nice to go faster than my PB but there’s always next year."

"I have the 500m (TT) which is nice, I like it. That’s just full gas out of the gate and it would be nice to do a PB time there. I don’t know where the legs are at with the 500m to be honest because it isn’t an Olympics event, so I was focusing on the sprint. It’ll just be another race in the legs, we’ll see how I go and I’ll try and enjoy it."

In the evening session, Sharpe started well a competitive field of 24 riders, comfortably avoiding elimination in the opening laps.

But as the field began to whittle down and the competition to avoid elimination intensified, a crash at the rear of the group ruled out a number of riders.

Sharpe avoided the crash but later in the race found herself boxed in late in a lap and was narrowly eliminated in 11th place.

Sharpe said: "I’m kind of disappointed with