Cork Person of the Year

THE man who developed disability tandem cycling in Ireland to Paralympic level was yesterday named Cork Person of the Month for August.

Denis Twomey from Inchera, Mahon, in Cork is chairman of Paralympic Cycling Ireland and is a contender for the overall Person of the Year award early next year.

Mr Twomey, who manages the Irish squad aiming to qualify for the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, has led the development of cycling for people with physical and sensory disabilities over the past decade. He also works with disabled cyclists across Europe.

He qualified with paralympic athlete Mark Kehoe for the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games.

He was nominated for the award by Kinsale /Cork area Red Cross branch committee members John Connolly, Peggy Mangan, James O’Mahony and Thomas Reilly.

Mr Twomey took the opportunity yesterday to appeal for corporate sponsors to help the Irish Paralympic Cycling squad qualify for the paralympics.

His team set four new national records and recorded two top 10 places in the world at the Paracycling World Championships held in Bordeaux last week.

However, with just one more Paralympic ranking event on the paracycling calendar, it is essential that Ireland send a squad to the Para Pan-American open championships in Colombia in November, he said.

The squad urgently needs €20,000 sponsorship to send the top rider form each category to Columbia, he said.

“It would be a shame if Irish athletes were deprived of a chance to compete at the Paralympics for the sake of €20,000,” he said.