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?

Twitter is obviously a load of shite.

But it does cut out the middle man between sport’s superstars and the rest of us.

Lance Armstrong was tweeting earlier – explaining he’s making good progress on the road to recovery after injury. One example: “Just off the bike. 6 hrs. Amazing ride. Harder than hell tho. Oh wait, that’s the way I like it”. Hell yeah!

The seven-times Tour de France winner broke his collarbone in a race in Spain last month and has been training in the US in a bid to be fit for what would be his first Giro d’Italia in May.

If that happens, he’ll be expected to race in July’s Tour de France but French authorities may yet ban him because of a disagreement over his behavior at a doping test in March; he took a shower before giving his sample.

Whatever your views on Armstrong, yellow wristbands, doping allegations, jerseys yellow and otherwise – it’s certainly true that Armstrong’s reputation is on the line if he’s refused admisssion to the Tour. This will clearly hurt his cancer charity. A lot, maybe.

I interviewed Greg Lemond relatively recently. If you’re not up on your plotlines in the forever pedalling soap opera that is professional cycling, then you need to know this:  LeMond does not where a Livestrong bracelet.

A blur of energy even now, LeMond has ADHD and punctuated the conversation with apologies for his ‘brain farts’ as he freewheeled off on another tangent. I wonder what he reckons of Armstrong’s ego-trip back to the European spotlight.

Incidentally, Lance will be in Ireland this summer according to his schedule. Let’s hope he doesn’t run into Paul Kimmage again. That’s some good YouTubing, let me tell ya.

In an attempt to ‘digitise’ everything I’ve ever written like the City Council belching rent books onto a hard drive, I’ve crowbarred in the LeMond piece below. But he has lived a page-turner: glory, betrayal, drugs, sexual abuse, guns, infidelity, money, no money and back again.

His perspective on the world varied. He enjoyed the unique loneliness only felt in the yellow jersey. He endured, through a veil of sweat and, he admits, tears, the unfamiliar view from the rear of the peloton. And when at last he folded away the bike, he got in the saddle to face down problems steeper than any feared Alpine climb. But Greg Lemond refuses to linger in the rear view mirror, a winner prefers to crane his neck at the next climb.

Gregory James Lemond is born in California in 1961. His father is a real-estate broker. His mother is an American mom in a home shared with two sisters, where Greg enjoys the outdoor life; fly-fishing; hunting, trapshooting and backpacking in summer months; downhill skiing in winter. Then he discovers cycling, and starts out on an incredible journey that would see him mark the sport rather than him be marked by it; he wins the Tour de France three times – twice with shotgun pellets in his body.

After a superb junior career, Lemond made swift, incremental progress in the pros, almost taking the Tour title in ’85 – where he says he was ordered not to win by his team – before eventually becoming the first American to take le maillot jaune in 1986. The era and this race in particular was marked by a fierce rivalry between Lemond and team-mate and bete noire Bernard Hinault, the last truly great French cyclist – who won his fifth title in ’85.

A year later, Hinault and Lemond were co-leaders of the La Vie Claire team, with Hinault publicly promising to ride in support of LeMond in gratitude for Lemond’s sacrifice in 1985. By stage 12, Hinault had built up a five-minute lead over his American colleague, claiming he was trying to draw out Lemond’s rivals, but he cracked in the mountains the next day and soon Lemond was in the lead. Although the two crested the Alpe d’Huez together to win the stage in a show of unity, it was clear that Hinault had been riding aggressively against his team mate. LeMond ultimately took the yellow jersey that year but felt betrayed by Hinault.
“He was my hero, a father figure; but the deception was really hard. But he was under a lot of pressure. He was going for his 6th tour; my argument was you wouldn’t have had a fifth without me. I had to race against him and pretend we were teammates. It really killed me psychologically.”

But at last he’d reached the pinnacle, and in the most difficult of circumstances – he thought. His next two Tour wins were to be in the face of far greater adversity. In April of 1987, while out turkey hunting, his brother-in-law discharged a shot-gun into Lemond’s back. Dramatic emergency surgery saved his life, but his career and life was shattered.

“The fightback was very, very rough; no one explained how hurt I was,” says Lemond, “I had 30 bullets still left in me, I lost 70% of my blood volume and I lost 40lbs of muscle mass. But I assumed it just took training. I had way too quick of expectations, everything was a do-or-die race. When I look back, it was a pretty quick recovery but for me it was an eternity.”

He returned in 1989, but he was no longer the swash-buckling champion leading from the front. Like a stroke victim frustrated when they can’t articulate what they know they know, he was in turmoil.
“The physical talent was there, but it was broken down so greatly. And it was psychologically very difficult because part of my problem was that I was used to being in the front, and when I couldn’t keep up I nearly blew up. It was probably more damaging physically but it was tough mentally too.

“You’re the last placed guy instead of the first. I remember the Tour of Italy in 89, first day I lost eight minutes in the mountains, I see Stephen Roche leading the group and I’m last and I finish 15 minutes behind them, and I’m like ‘God I cant believe I used to be that good. I’m never gonna be that good again’.

“I was gonna quit that day, but my wife said ‘Greg, wait till the end of the year. Don’t put any pressure’, and I stated going my own pace and I slowly felt better and I started to improve.”

Remarkably, Lemond found himself in the shadow of the Champs Elysees that July, as the Star Spangled Banner heralded his triumph despite 37 shotgun pellets in his chest, including some in the lining of his heart, beating Frenchman Laurent Fignon by just eight seconds, the narrowest margin in the history of the race. But, amazingly, he’d returned to the pinnacle again.

Though usually feeling that nagging hunger genuine winners endure even in victory, Lemond admits he was sated that day. “89 was the most satisfying win, because I was literally on the podium thinking ‘two months ago I was gonna quit’ but that’s where I always felt is where I belonged. ’89 I was satisfied,” he reaffirms.

The following year, Lemond retained the title, becoming one of the few cyclists to win the Tour without taking a stage. He eventually endured “a painful” divorce from the sport in 1994, after establishing himself as one of the truly great cyclists – but he was to wobble on the pedestal many had placed him on.

IT’S 1999 and a proud Lemond is close to tears watching a young American rider win the Tour, his first of seven in a row. Fast forward to July 2001, Lemond is about to see his position as America’s pre-eminent rider taken by Lance Armstrong. Lemond finds himself at the centre of a storm however when he learns that the young superstar is working with Michele Ferrari, an Italian doctor who is about to stand trial for doping charges (he’s cleared). But Lemond criticises Armstrong for associating with him, sparking an angry and ugly spat between the two.

The pressure on Lemond is unbearable; former fans spit abuse onto the internet, business interests coldly warn him to not rock the boat. Lemond, through tears, issues an apology, identifying Armstrong as “a great champion”.

But the 47-year-old refuses to freewheel on the subject of the ubiquitous doping which courses through the sport he loves. Floyd Landis, a former team-mate of Armstrong’s on the US Postal teams wins the tour in 2006, only to be found to be using banned substances. In a private telephone conversation, Lemond pleads with Landis to come clean in an effort to save the sport before admitting he’d been abused by a family friend as a child, a secret that had haunted him throughout his life, and again urged Landis to confess.

Lemond later received a call – the night before he was to testify against Landis – from someone claiming to be his abuser and threatening to disclose Lemond’s secret if he turned up the next day. Shaking with rage, he traced the call on his Balckberry to Landis’ manager Will Geoghan. The ugly affair shook Lemond badly, but he fought on.

“If that’s not rock bottom over the last couple of years then I’m giving up. I think it the sport has hit rock bottom, but there’s a huge shift and a rethinking in the whole doping problem, which I’ve been pushing. It has to be independent and transparent and the ability to go after the doctors and managers who supply it,” he says.

“These riders might be adults but they’re still kids who are passionate about the sport. And you have to be passionate about the sport to go that far. To be faced with giving up or being convinced that it’s not gonna really hurt you, that’s what happens. But it does hurt because they know it’s not right, and there’s a big cost psychologically and health wise. I think most riders want it to be clean.”

Earlier, classes were disrupted at a school on the southside of Limerick city as Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year 1989, bounces through the gates. Attempting to persuade the children on the importance of cycling safety, Lemond agrees to pull up his shirt to reveal the scars of a gunshot wound. No longer haunted by the past, he’s happy to peer over his shoulder, with the world, to take in the lows he’s plumbed as well as the range of Alpine peaks he’s scaled.