Top sports award for cycling legend Kelly

Irish cycling legend Sean Kelly is to be honoured with a hall of fame sporting award in Co Tipperary this weekend, it emerged today.

The Carrick-on-Suir sprinter will be presented with the Mick Doyle Golden Memory Award at the Canon Hayes National Sports Awards in Aherlow.

The gong is named after the former Irish international rugby player and coach who died in a car accident in Northern Ireland in May 2004.

Co Kerry-born Doyle had a close association with the Canon Hayes event.

Martin Quinn, a spokesman for the 10th annual awards, said today: “The Mick Doyle Golden Memory Award will go to cyclist Sean Kelly in tribute to a career in which he was rated number one in the world as well as being regarded as one of the greatest sprinters of all time.”

Irish Sports Council chief executive John Treacy will be the guest speaker on Saturday night.

Cork’s dual all-Ireland football and camogie winner Mary O’Connor will also be honoured.

Ireland’s national cricket team and all-Ireland football champions Tyrone have been nominated for the overall national award.

Kelly, who will accept his award in person, was one of the most dominant and successful cyclists of the 1980s and is regarded as one of the finest Classics riders of all time.

In a 17-year professional career that began in 1977, he won 193 races including nine Classics, a tally only bettered by Belgian Eddy Merckx.

Kelly also won the Paris-Nice stage race seven years in a row, and topped the inaugural UCI World Cup rankings.

When the international body FICP introduced world cycling rankings in March 1984, Kelly was the first rider to be ranked World No 1, a title he held for more than six years and which still remains a record.

He achieved 33 wins in the 1984 season.

He finished 4th in the Tour de France in 1985 and won the green points jersey in 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1989.

Kelly’s career also spanned the eras of Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Greg Lemond, Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong.