Secret Cyclist: How Orla Walsh went from bike commuter to bike champion in a few years

Orla Walsh went from smoking and drinking heavily to a vegan lifestyle, breaking national cycling records along the way. The professional cyclist chats to our resident columnist ahead of her race this Sunday at 11:30am

Cyclist Orla Walsh. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

My partner said if I’m going to write about cycling, I should try to speak to Orla Walsh. If you don’t know who Orla Walsh is, go over to her Instagram page and watch the pinned reel. To the soundtrack of Echosmith’s ‘Cool Kids’, there’s a video of a 26-year-old leaving her house on a bike. It could be any of the tens of thousands of people who cycle to school, college, or work in Ireland every day. 

The reel suddenly cuts to clips of a track sprinter wearing our national colours at the UCI’s (Cycling’s World Governing Body) Velodrome in Switzerland. This is the story of Orla Walsh, who went from bike commuter to bike champion in the space of a few years.