In the saddle with the Sean Kelly Academy

I went to a secret location somewhere outside Brussels to visit the Sean Kelly Cycling Academy some time ago to see how the Irish pro riders train and live. The team look to be in good form at the moment ahead of a busy summer. The piece is below.

WHEN the peleton converges on the start line in Grand Canal Square in Dublin for the first stage of the Tour of Ireland tomorrow morning, 16 teams from 11 different countries will be represented. But through the patchwork of colourful jerseys, will run a thread of green – Sean Kelly’s An Post team.

Founded by the Carrick-on-Suir cycling legend four years ago in an attempt to offer a platform for promising, young Irish amateurs, this season has seen the team come of age with three race victories so far. Kelly, a man born on the nape of two counties, and after a lifetime in the saddle on foreign roads, has attempted to blend ‘overseas riders’ with the best from this country at his high-performance academy in Belgium – a policy that is starting to pay off.

Stephen Gallagher from Co Armagh became, last May, the first home-grown winner of the FBD Insurance Rás since 2004. At 28, he’s comfortable in the role of the team’s elder statesman and boasts a lifetime of experience in the hothouse of European cycling.

Born into a family of cycling fanatics, his youth was spent pedaling on the back roads of Ulster. He recalls taking a toilet break while on a lengthy training spin in the province, only to find himself piddling into a hedgerow brimming with half a squadron of camouflaged British soldiers. The conditions and training programme his present team is provided with at the Sean Kelly Academy in Merchtem outside Brussels are perfect in comparison.

“This is the easiest set up I’ve experienced in all my years racing. It’s just so simple with the lads. Here, you’re right beside the airport, it’s full of Irish lads and everyone understands each other.”

Páidí O'Brien

Gallagher, who has been married two years, is sitting in the living room of the academy with teammates Páidí O’Brien and Mark Cassidy. They sip coffee, which has been a while in the making as one of the junior team members broke the kettle in an attempt to boil it while empty. The place – though a hub of activity for a team of highly-trained full-time athletes – has the feel of a house on New Jersey’s south shore, filled with a gang of summering J1 students from Ireland. A tricolour is pinned to the wall along with a jersey from mentor Kelly, while dvd boxes carpet the floor. With team and academy manger Kurt Bogaerts living elsewhere, the lads look after themselves – with scrawls on a white board dictating whose turn it is to cook and clean.

“The ones who are here permanently know what to do; and it’s done without the board. But there’s a bit of rubbing your name out and putting someone else up the odd time,” says Gallagher, “The problem is when other teams come over and stay and they don’t know the routine — and you have to pull them. But Páidí would be the longest here, he’s the boss. We call him the oracle — if anything goes missing, ask him.”

O’Brien, a 24-year-old from Banteer in north Cork, cut his teeth with the Kanturk Credit Union team. “There was a club run by a man called Dan Curtin and I tried it out as a 10-year-old,” he says, “I go back now sometimes and I see Dan has a car in front of the racers, and one at the back. Years ago there weren’t many cars on the roads so there was no need. But he has them organised. The last time I was home I see loads of 10-year-old flying along. It’s good to see.”

And from that acorn, O’Brien has carved out a hard-wood career on the continent – insisting the monk’s lifestyle which is that of a professional rider is not too dry when cloistered in this academy.

“We can motivate each other in training but everyone is different. If you’re in college, some people might study more, some might cram. Some people need more training than others.

“But it’s good that we’re all together and we can motivate each other. This is our third year on the team, and the group is excellent and that’s reflected in the races too.

“People think ‘Oh we’re professional athletes and it’s all hard work’ — and it is — but when you’re not always on your own, it’s good.”

“We have rides where we might just go to a nice town, have a chat, a coffee and look at the girls. Especially in an area like this, you can enjoy it big time,” he adds.

And the company is welcome – Ipods are sometimes used when it’s not – as the days and weeks between races are anchored in making the hard yards in the saddle. “The whole day revolves around training,” says Gallagher, “You’re up first thing and into it. “Yesterday we had a split session. Most of the guys went out and did two hours on the road. I did an hour-and-a-half on a home trainer thing. We had a massage then at two, then had a bit of lunch, a sleep and then training again on the road for two hours at a different cadence and intensity. And that’s a typical day to be honest with you.”

Mark Cassidy, from Meath boasts racing pedigree, being the son of two-time Olympian cyclist. But he is also dating cycling royalty, the boss’s daughter. He certainly joins his teammates for coffee in picturesque towns but when your girlfriend’s father is Sean Kelly, perhaps you don’t look at the girls. “Sean’s grand,” the 23-year-old insists, “he didn’t say anything… well he’d say something but just the usual parental stuff. He wouldn’t be like the stereotypical father in these TV shows going mad.”

After a long week in the office, these young men’s peers can freewheel for the weekend with a late-night drink and a doner kebab. That can’t be the case in the Academy. “We’re talking about going to the cinema tonight,” says Gallagher, “and we go out for meals and stuff like that but you can’t exactly go out on the razzle.

“That’s just one of those things. You’re losing a lot of training and you’re putting weight on and you’re not recovering well and cycling’s a sport where if you’re half a per cent out, it’s the difference between holding on to the group and getting dropped.”

So with the bright lights of Brussels dimmed by ambition, what fills the long evenings? “There was a FIFA league last year,” says Cassidy, as he warily eyes the neglected-looking Playstation in the corner, “but it got a bit serious so we’re better off sticking to the cartoons.”

“It usually leads to a riot,” agrees Gallagher.

“We’re happy with films now,” says O’Leary. What kind? “Documentaries about birds and seagulls; no, anything really – chewing gum for the brain.”

As we talk, the trio trail one eye on the televised action from Beijing’s Velodrome. London 2012 is something Cassidy and O’Leary have in their crosshairs. But such goals seem an Alpine climb away; is it worth the commitment?

“Friends of mine leave school and they’re in the pub and they have good craic and all,” Cassidy shrugs, “but I’d rather go and try and win a race in the next couple of years. And then I can always say ‘I won that race’ while my mates will say ‘I worked in Superquinn for 10 years… and I’m a bit overweight.’”

The team and the academy are managed by 31-year-old Belgian Kurt Bogaerts, who describes his job as being ‘sometimes like father, sometimes a brother’. His responsibilities swing from ensuring there’s milk in the fridge to leaning out the window of a car to issue racing instructions during a violent descent in the Pyrenees.

“The lads have plenty of freedom,” he says, “These guys are of a certain age now; it’s their job. To waste it, that’s their problem.

“They are very equal to each other. The first few years you had a good difference in levels but now they’re all similar – it’s more a group and they help each other a lot.

“It’s important with the rooms if you go on a state race and, as a manager you know who is feeling good and who is not, who is feeling low, and put these two together. I did that this year and it worked. The guy who is on a high will bring up the guy who is a little down.”

O’Brien, sharing a plate of Mark and Spencer’s biscuits, explains that the team, don’t need someone to crack the whip in the house like Big Brother in a spandex yellow jersey. “Kurt’s the boss but he has a good mentality as well. If you’re going well in the race, he wouldn’t see any reason why you shouldn’t enjoy it and have some fun along the way,” he says.

“I’m completely serious,” adds Gallagher, “that if this was a French team, you wouldn’t eat those biscuits, they’d literally throw them out the window.

Mark Cassidy

“I remember a coach taking my food out of the fridge — food I’d paid for — and saying ‘no, no, this won’t do’. And that’s what cracks young guys really and deters them from continuing and you wouldn’t really blame them.”

The professional game continues to scar itself as it scratches at the ugly rash of doping scandals and cynics will insist you don’t win Tours de France on chocolate biscuits alone – ask Floyd Landis. But Ireland’s emerging generation of cycling stars is doing it with wit and hard work; Celtic Tiger cubs guided by one of the sport’s old lions.

Setting off from the capital’s docklands in the morning, they face 900kms of Irish road. How much of that journey, another leg in their burgeoning careers, will the young teammates reel in together?