Double delight for Rohan

Mark Rohan shut his eyes tightly and exhaled the deepest of breaths as the first bars of Amhrán na bhFiann swept through the home straight in Brands Hatch and the tricolour was raised in his honour for the second time in three days.

For five years, ever since he bought his first hand-cycling bike, he had worked towards being a double Paralympic gold medallist but his thoughts stretched back still further yesterday — to that day when everything changed in November, 2001.

The man from Ballinahown was just 20-year-old when he crashed his motorbike with such horrific repercussions on his way to a soccer match in Tullamore. It had been a long, hard road from there to here.