‘When I turned to thank the rider who helped, it was Sean Kelly’s face smiling back’

A love of cycling brought Emmet Ryan to the Tour de Munster but he discovered much more on the journey

Francois Mousset and Jerry Masters leading the group coming from Gougane Barra.

The sport of cycling first revealed itself to me in the summer of 1985. I was eight. It was hot. In Ballinspittle the statues were ‘moving’.

But for me, it was the first of many summers spent on my grandaunt’s farm by the Royal Canal in Westmeath. There, my brother and I learned to work.