One for the road with Carrick’s king Kelly
MANY of you – those, perhaps, more familiar with recessions which are more PJ Mara than NAMA – will remember March 21, 1992.
That Sunday afternoon, Ireland kicked off their Five Nations campaign in the Parc de Princes, in front of 50,000 people with a 32-point drubbing; Right Said Fred’s Deeply Dippy may have pumped from the kitchen radio as you checked on the much-anticipated weekly roast and, Carrick-on-Suir’s Sean Kelly was about to earn his last-ever victory in a classic after a professional cycling career that creaked under the weight of achievement.
Never meet your heroes. I learned that harshest of lessons when former Stone Roses lead singer Ian Brown threw me out of an after-show party, with the wafer-thin lie that there was one too many bodies in the room and ‘the fireman’ wanted me out.
But Kelly is different. The Tour of Ireland gets underway on Friday and with box-office names like Armstrong and Cavendish, the country’s budding pros and amateurs alike will be cast as supporting stars in a production sprinkled with a little Hollywood magic. Yesterday I too climbed on a bike, to cycle in the slipstream of greatness.
“The gap still looks about the same and Kelly is leading the chase. He’s got to do that because Sorenson is behind him and Sorenson won’t do any work at all.”
We’re at the bottom of Seskin Hill – a twisting, knotted climb on the outskirts of Kelly’s hometown.
I’m furiously fumbling with a loose wheel, an upturned mountain bike, in ill-fitting cycle shorts, odd socks and a borrowed An Post team top.
Passing motorists slow to walking pace and wind down their windows to gape at the apparently professional rider on the side of a mountain in Waterford who looks like he thinks ‘the spokes’ are a trendy New York rock band.
I see them, through a veil of tears, mouthing in astonishment: “Kelly’s team are gone to shite, anyway, Mary.”
“Do you think you need a bigger jersey?” the former pro deadpans as he hands it to me, sceptical eyes darting up and down my less-athletic frame.
The director sportif does not looked impressed with his new water carrier. Eventually, after much red-faced messing with the wheel clips, he takes the loose wheel and, like an old-school father frustrated with his bookish-yet-clumsy son, effortlessly slots it on, points the bike – which is now on two wheels for the first time this morning – up the hill at last.
I climb on to the bike like an Aztec chief mounting the first horse brought to South America by Spanish conquistadores. “I hope you brought your helmet,” he says.
“Kelly into fourth spot on the road at the moment. Yet again another bend and Argentin will be able to look behind. And Kelly’s looking very keen.’’
David Letterman’s production team have a rule which they have written down and tacked up by the soundstage entrance, behind the massive set inside the famous Ed Sullivan Theatre in midtown Manhattan.
Like Liverpool’s footballers, tapping the ‘This is Anfield’ sign as they clip-clop down the tunnel steps, Late Show guests face their own notice offering advice: Hit the seat – and go. It’s much the same when you hope to cycle up Waterford’s Seskin Hill – because like time and tide, it seems, former road race expert Kelly, waits for no man.
“And Kelly’s looking very keen. And Kelly’s rocking out the saddle and it looks like he’s got away from Sorenson.”
Eventually, we twist around a leg-breaking turn and face up the legendary Seskin Hill. While Greg Lemond was forging his iron will in the mountains of America’s mid-west, the man who was to become his great rival was honing his skills in Ireland’s sunny south-east.
He offers to bring an asthma inhaler the next time as I huff and puff like the Big Bad Wolf.
My guide – in his mid 50s, let’s remember – looks like he’s on an escalator while I’m dragging myself up a lift shaft by the finger nails.
“Just waiting to see where Sean Kelly is again. One of the oldest men in the sport and still with all that exuberance. And now with two young twins to feed as well, he’ll be going for that money. A great competitor.”
As we take the descent on the glassy surface – one that feels like Mount Ventoux after a foam party – my screeching back brake (Kelly earlier predicted I’d go down the mountain head first, rather than on the bike, if I touched the sensitive front brake) disturbs the tranquil mid-morning atmosphere in the fresh countryside. Is this supposed to be fun?
“Leisure cycling is getting more and more popular and that is certainly supposed to be fun. But competitive riding is a hard, hard slog,” he says.
At the end of the hill he skids along the track again, spraying mud in his wake. He seems to be still having fun.
Look at this! This is... awww... the Italian crowd have just been told that Kelly has caught Argentin and they’ve all gone awww! The depression has set in. Kelly now beginning to wind it up. The crowd can now see that it’s the Italian versus the Irishman. Kelly’s got away. Kelly’s going to get it! Kelly gets it!”
The Waterford man is now, of course, more often behind a desk with a mobile phone clamped to his ear than hunched over warm handlebars.
As general manager of the An Post team, he’ll pit his side against big stars this weekend and the following week he will once again line out with the country’s salt-of-the earth cycling public for his own charity spin.
Afterwards, he admits, one or two will pull him by the elbow and recount their story of the day he out-sprinted Moreno ‘Il Capo’ Argentin in the Milan San Remo. Or indeed many, many other dates that he etched into Irish sporting history.
He’ll overhear more still, he says smiling, proudly tell their friends in the pub after these spins with his adoring and aging fans, how they overtook Kelly on the mountain or outsprinted him coming into a provincial town.
Never meet your heroes? Try telling us that.
* The final two tours in the An Post Cycle Series take place in Waterford and Cork. The Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford takes place on Sunday, August 30 and the Rebel Tour in Cork, Sunday, September 13. See www.theseankellytour.com for more details.
Go green for the Sean Kelly An Post team during the Tour of Ireland and win prizes. Check out www.facebook.com/anpostcycling for more.
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Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
