Bloodied, bruised but unbowed

His was arguably the story of last year’s An Post Rás, when his battered body and twisted wreck of a bike was posted on message boards and chat forums with headlines ranging from ‘This ain’t football’ to ‘No blood-subs here’.

Britain’s biggest-selling cycling magazine, Cycling Weekly, featured his blood-spattered face on the front of their June edition and before he knew it, Donal Harrington’s crash after 40 kilometres of Ireland’s showpiece cycling race had become the stuff of legend.

“I didn’t know what I was at when it happened,” Harrington recalls. “I got up straight away and tried straightening the bike. I got back on but some officials tried stopping me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t realise I was bleeding. I threw away the glasses because I couldn’t see where I was going and then the ambulance wanted to stop me. But I knew I couldn’t stop because I wouldn’t have finished inside the time limit. The girl (in the ambulance) demanded I stop but I said I’d only stop if she had a bandage ready when I did. She didn’t, so she threw a bit of water on me and off I went again.”