Cycling Ireland Interview – Feb 2012

Recently Eamonn Wyer did an interview

with Cycling Ireland

 

 

 

Club: Epic, I’m a secret mountain-biker, don’t tell anyone.

 

Role:  One of the backbones at the Ratoath BMX facility – that’s very kind, Shay MacNally is the main man in Ratoath, I’m a willing helper. I’m trying to grow BMX racing and I’ll work with whoever can help that goal. Ratoath is now well established, the local parents are brilliant, they and Shay run it and have helped make it the biggest and best cycling club in the country.

 

How did you get involved with cycling?

I loved bikes from an early age, kept breaking them when I landed, so loved the arrival of BMX bikes, they were solid! First raced in about 1983/84 got the bug. The most exciting thing you can do on a bike is race 7 other riders over a BMX track, it’s still a massive adrenalin buzz and hasn’t changed a bit.

 

Who is your cycling role model, and why?

This is a real hard one, I’ve never really had any sporting heroes, I admired Kelly n Roche’s efforts in the 80’s, but roadies don’t count ; ) I’ve always believed you should do it yourself, why not?  if they can do it so can you. But seeing as I can’t do it anymore my new heroes are 5 year old Corey Waller (future superstar) and Kelv1n Batey (current superstar). Now both of these guys should be carrying the Olympic Torch when it comes here, Kelv1n passing it to Corey would be proper, so let’s make that happen.

 

 

What was your favourite race/venue?

Semperit BMX Track, Ballyfermot. Sadly gone, great race venue, built beside the social club of the Semperit Tyre Factory by the employees whose kids were BMX’ers, those guys must have had some respect to pull that off, how’s that for social responsibility? You don’t see that anymore. The races every Wednesday night and Sundays made winners out of lots of riders.

 

What inspired you to create the Ratoath BMX facility?

The 2008 Olympics saw BMX added to the menu, it’s about time BMX got the recognition it deserves, it’s the best sport in the world by a long way. I think it’s addition was a major boost for the games the Olympic Movement should be grateful, one day the I.O.C. might even help Irish BMX out. I knew its addition to the Olympics gave BMX the legitimacy it deserves and would raise people interests. Now it has as much right to funding as 100M, Swimming, Boxing etc… more than Rugby or GAA.  I knew the bang for the buck would be off the scale with BMX but I hadn’t counted on the lack of support and getting the run around. But what kept us going was knowing people would love this sport and in my mind I was seeing the faces of the Finnegans, the Gilmers and Brian Connors who were the organisers of BMX in the 80’s when we regularly had 600 kids at a race, knowing what they did for us and how hard they worked I didn’t want to let them down, otherwise we would have been failures and learned nothing during our lives from that first golden period of Irish BMX.

 

 

Continue reading HERE

 

Original article HERE