Felix English relishing Olympic debut after 'unbelievably stressful two years'

The Irish Omnium pair of Felix English and Mark Downey arrive in Tokyo on the back of a gruelling few years

Track cyclist Felix English during a Tokyo 2020 Team Ireland announcement. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

The only problem with straining every sinew to make the Olympic Games is that it can sometimes come to be an end in itself rather than the foundation level for something even higher again.

There’s no way of measuring this. You can monitor training regimes and food intake, prepare yourself mentally, but there is no actual gauge with a needle that you can tap with your finger before stepping into a ring or onto a track.

This sort of intangible gets an airing every four years. It was raised only this week when the efforts of some of Ireland's track athletes, many of whom spent the earlier part of the summer traipsing around Europe looking for times, were placed under a microscope.

Felix English and Mark Downey are, if anything, lightly raced thanks to the manner in which Covid and related restrictions knifed through the track cycling schedule but the Irish Omnium pair arrived in Tokyo on the back of a gruelling few years.

It’s only four years since they were joined at the hip for one of the sport’s most complicated races and, while it started off with some superb World Cup performances, things began to turn on the track and off it where they parted company with their coach.

“It’s two years of our lives that have been unbelievably stressful,” says English.

The Brighton-born rider describes them as an “unknown quantity” given the lack of racing they have done. While many others have been competing in the Giro d’Italia or Tour de France, they were cloistered in a training camp in Majorca.

How all this plays out at the Izu Velodrome is anyone’s guess.

“Yeah, we had a really tough two-year qualification period and when it got postponed it was like a blessing for us because we needed a good period of rest to recover properly. We were quite low down the rankings from the start.

“So we were fighting the whole time and there were a lot of teams that were quite safe so they could relax in that final period whereas we were full-on the whole time. We’ve both benefited from that period of rest.” 

English has been racing for Ireland for over a decade now, his ties to the island stemming from parents who made the move over to the UK shortly before he was born. His mother and father, incidentally, are in the process now of moving back to Gorey.

His dad represented Ireland on the bike at junior level and English just happened to find that, of all the many sports he tried, he too was best suited to the saddle. Growing up in the UK was a better place to be an aspiring track cyclist than Ireland.

By the time he was 15 he was training on a velodrome tack at least once a fortnight, meeting up with others his age from around the country and soaking up the coach-led sessions and skills that soon became second nature.

Promises of a velodrome in Ireland have been made time and again in the course of his career. Among them was the assertion that it would be up and running this year but the ambition now is that it can be operational before Paris 2024.

“It is a bit frustrating,” says English. “It’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t have an immediate impact on us, I think, because we have the training base here (in Majorca) but for future generations trying to get into track cycling… 

“Like, you see it with Great Britain where there are youngsters as young as five or six starting on the track and those skills that you learn at such a young are really hard to replicate later on in life.

“So, for future track teams going forward, having a velodrome is essential or otherwise you don’t have that crop of talent that other nations do have. You might have one or two guys who have a knack for the track but otherwise, it’s slim pickings, I think.”