Picture credit: Killian Kelly

Remember the bit in the old baseball movie ‘The Natural’ when the eponymous Robert Redford is lamenting his sorry past (he was shot by Barbara Hershey), beating himself up to Glenn Close?

Redford: “But I didn’t see it coming.”
Close: “How could you know she’d hurt you? How could anyone?”
Redford: “I didn’t see it coming.”Close: “You should have?”
Redford: “Yes. But I didn’t. Why didn’t I?”

I’d like to see the Sundance Kid hurtling precariously through – as I did on Wednesday – the beautiful Ballyhoura Forest which hugs the border between north Cork and south county Limerick, on a sophisticated mountain bike.

I pulled on the gloves they gave me inside out, bunny hopped around the car park thanks to the teenager-sensitive front brakes and was told, with a smile, to fasten my ‘brain bucket’ helmet. Perhaps I should’ve seen it coming.

In total, Ballyhoura offers more than 90km of biking trails along this single track, as well as on forest road climbs, which marks it apart as one of Europe’s top mountain-biking destinations. These loops range from the relatively easy six kilometres of Greenwood Loop, which would take a slow-ish biker (hi there!) about an hour to complete, to the leave-it-to-the-experts 51km Loop.

This, the ‘brown path’, is for the absolute headers. It could take a biker up to five hours to finish, including as it does l’Alpe D’Huez-like climbs and tough-to-negotiate features in a slaloming, long descent.

Local company Trailriders rent out the bikes to those who visit the recently-developed facility (€25 for a nice bike couple of hours, for example). Jonathon Mansell has just completed his Leaving Certificate and is about to start an exciting outdoor pursuits course in Kinsale, Co Cork.

For now, he works full-time for Trailriders and is known around here as one of the most proficient mountain bikers to yet turn the pedals up the hill. At the moment however he’s staying out of the saddle due to a hip injury. Another clue.

“We’re pretty busy at the moment – we had about 47 bikes out on the mountain on Saturday – and guys just keep coming back.

“It’s not for everyone – some don’t know what to expect to be honest – but we had three lads earlier flew around in a couple of hours and then went for a trip around the green course. And that was their first time. So they’ll be back.”

Mansell wheels out one of their newer bikes and sits me up on it.

“The brakes are very sensitive, so just feather them like this,” he says, spreading three fingers across each lever and touching them softly. “You’ll be grand.”

Diarmiud O’Leary is a retired secondary school teacher from the local town of Kilfinnan. He’s kindly volunteered to spend his morning guiding me up – and then down – the mountain side.

A highly interesting man with a love of the locality having been involved in the development of the Ballyhoura Way, he peppers generous encouragement (“you’re more confident now, you have the fitness anyway etc”) with some saddle-soiling scare stories (see that rock there, the greatest advertisement for a helmet…)

I follow him tentatively as we wend up the incline in a narrow pathway which is hemmed with large rocks and carpeted in moss, earth, whatever. He explains later that one group walked their bikes around the trail having expected the route to be tarmaced. “I don’t know why they wanted mountain bikes, really,” he shrugs.

I soon grow a bit more at ease and happily tail Diarmuid’s wheel as he offers, like an F1 technician, insigts into little corners that cause trouble while he’s not afraid to stop and admire the impressive 180degree vista that swallows the Golden Vale to the Galtees.

After a lung-busting crawl to the top of our route, we begin to peel back down. O’Leary is fearless as he skids across long and winding 2-ft-wide timber bridges that stretch across yawning drops.

Surveying the footprints and wheel tracks in the soft mud below – evidence of past falls by better riders than me – I choose to dent my pride rather than backside and wheel the bike across the bridge like a small child crossing the road to school. I’m not ashamed to tell you this.

The US air force have an expression for the period of time immediately after a young pilot fully qualifies and arrogantly thinks they can do it all: the death zone.

As we reach the end of the trip and I’m comfortable enough to stand cautiously on the pedals as Diarmuid encourages me, so to better manoeuvre the bike beneath I realise that I am in fact a natural. If I come up a few times a month, perhaps London 2012 might yet be a possibility.

Then comes that rock. An innocuous nick of the pedal. A skid. A screech. And you’re picking yourself out of a rabbit hole.

“The most important thing is to get back on straight away,” said Diarmuid. “It’s like they say with horses isn’t it? You must always get back on.”

After a giddily enjoyable few hours in Ballyhoura, I’ll be getting on again soon I’m sure.

Ballyhoura Forest hosts one leg of the 2010 An Post cycle series on Sunday, September 12. The Rebel Rush presents cyclists and mountain bikers with a choice of three trails between 6k and 35km. Visit www.corkrebeltour.ie. Registration closes this Wednesday.

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie                                                                                              Twitter: @adrianrussell

The beloved Eurosport cycling commentary team tried to prod some memories of this particular race – the famous Milan-San Remo – from the very modest Sean Kelly during the Tour coverage yesterday. He was pretty circumspect about his last real win in a classic, as you’d expect.

It’s worth a watch. What a complete hero.

Really cool update: German Eurosport posted up a video today of Kelly climbing the Tournalet on a 100-year-old bike with wooden wheels and old skool cycling gear.

With co-commentator David Harmon hanging out the window of a comfortable car, laughing, it’s not the Carrick man’s ideal way to spend the rest day, I’m sure.

Speculation is spreading online after a video blogger named Michele Bufalino produced footage that combined parts of a report on motorized bicycles from Italian television with footage from two races won by the Swiss cyclist Fabien Cancellara this year

It’s well worth a watch for the clockwork, Victorian-era scheming which makes a change from the chemical cheating we’re now used to.

The piece is also an example of slick multi-media journalism which is beautifully practical.

It won’t let me embed the footage in a size to fit this website, so check it out here, if interested.

Please mind your toes, reader; there’s quite a big name about to be dropped in a second or two.

Over a coffee in a Limerick city hotel a few years ago, cycling legend Greg Lemond (clang!) told me that the public, traumatic ordeal Floyd Landis put him through was beyond anything the Alps ever threatened.

The eyes that lasered into the back of double-crossing, pantomime villain Bernard Hinault all those years ago, were the same west-coast blue. In his 40s now, he’d fill a pair a yellow jersey more violently. He was greyer too and the Eurosport logo was not, as I remembered, constantly visible over his left shoulder, like a setting sun. But, yes, it was him.

Mid-chat, he quickly rang home to ask one of his children for his email password. As his kid scurried off, loudly tutting his father’s forgetfulness, Lemond placed his hand over the hand-set, twirled his finger around in the air by his forehead and explained to me: “I get these brain farts, y’know’’. I nodded.

Though F Scott Fitzgerald wrote that American lives have no second acts, LeMond long ago folded away the racing bike and forgot the aching glory of Tours de France. And this week too the curtain fell at last on the Californian’s ugly episode with Landis.

First let’s recall 2001; Lemond is about to see his position as America’s pre-eminent rider taken by Armstrong. When Lemond 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) he criticises his compatriot for associating with him. It sparks an angry and ugly spat between the two which rumbles on still.

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

He refuses however to ignore the ubiquitous doping problem which courses through the sport he loves. Landis, a former team-mate of Armstrong’s on the US Postal team, wins the Tour in 2006, only to be caught using banned substances. In a private telephone conversation, Lemond pleads with Landis to come clean for the sake of cycling, before admitting he’d been abused by a family friend as a child. It was secret that had haunted him throughout his life.

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 Blackberry to Landis’ manager Will Geoghan.

The following morning, in a dramatic courtroom moment that could have been drafted in the Law and Order writers’ room, an attorney placed LeMond’s phone beneath an overhead projector and displayed the mystery caller’s number. Humiliated, Landis and his lawyers fired Geoghegan on the spot.

Lemond had stood up to the bullies. But in the war on drugs, one of the sport’s greatest champions was collateral damage. He had never told a soul before Landis of the abuse he suffered as a child. His personal wound now picked apart in public, and with a wonderful career behind him, a real darkness crossed his brow for the first time in years. His marriage disintegrated quickly and he left the family home.

Seven days ago, Landis at last dropped his long-time and flimsy protestations of innocence and confessed to doping throughout his career. He is the only man to ever be stripped of a Tour and, clearly, if his story existed in a vacuum it would be huge.

However, the headlines were set in Livestrong Yellow because Landis became the fifth US Postal team member to implicate his former friend: Lance Armstrong.

Inevitably, this blew a shutter-shaking media storm at Armstrong’s door all this week. The seven-time hero of the Champs Elysee whistled self-consciously and continues to brazen it out/ignore those annoying revelations form those around him.

That’s the big show, ladies and gentlemen. More ink will be spilled on Armstrong’s maillot jaune than oil in the Gulf of Mexico. But that is not our story, today.

No, please instead picture the kitchen of a large, comfortable house in suburban Iowa last Saturday. Lemond’s telephone rings. A familiar voice offers an apology. And Lemond – typically – accepts it immediately, though what’s gone before might warrant more.

Lemond went on to scale his demons, much like every other challenge in his life. When he was shot by his brother-in-law in the off-season after claiming his first Tour, he hung on for life and went on to win two more while dragging 30 pellets in his chest, around France.

When he lost his family, he won them back. When his childhood trauma was exposed cruelly, he set up a foundation for men like him.

“I accepted his apology, but that isn’t really what’s important,” Lemond said after his phone conversation with Landis, “Sincere apologies are for those that make them, not for those to whom they are made. I hope that as a result Floyd can begin rebuilding his life. More people should apologize, and more people should accept apologies when sincerely made.”

He might be liable to brain farts; but that sounds right to me.

adrianrussell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in today’s Irish Examiner newspaper

A FORMER rider in standard-issue team colours with neat red hair pinned down under designer shades, Kurt Bogaerts doesn’t really look it – but he drives like Evel Knievel, late for Mass.

The Belgian national is manager of the Sean Kelly/ An Post cycling team, and on the third stage of the recent FBD Insurance Rás, he’s hoping – and planning – for a good day.

The Carrick-on-Suir legend, Kelly founded the team in 2006, basing them in his academy in Belgium. Bogaerts runs the show and most importantly, as I fold myself into the passenger seat, he drives the car. He makes it look easy; it isn’t.

Being in the team car when the stage reaches fever pitch later that day is being at the race’s nerve centre. Self-consciously sipping coffee and trying to blend into the background in the more comfortable van before the day’s action is to be at its heart.

Niko Eekhout – a former Belgian champion and a grizzled, veteran pro compared to his more inexperienced colleagues – has his Popeye-arm legs perched on the dashboard. Through the stereo, he pumps relentless Euro trance (it’s 10am) with more beats per minute than Thumper the rabbit on an adrenaline drip. Clearly, he’s trying to prod a reaction from his manager as he flashes a mischievous smile, and utters something in Flemish to his compatriot Benny De Schrooder.

De Schrooder, looking like he should still have stabilisers and an A-Team sticker on his bike, carefully pulls on his footwear. But his fresh features belie a dogged competitor. He takes the Ipod from his older team-mate and, giggling, turns the music to another dance tune.

Towards the back of the van, Bogaerts is – deliberately – ignoring the rave anthems confusing the American tourists outside in the historic, harbour town of Cobh. Páidí O’Brien – from Banteer in Cork – rubs oil into his legs and speaks in a faux Low Countries accent while other Irish athletes David O’Loughlin and Mark Cassidy look for a missing piece of equipment and discuss the much-improved weather conditions. In small groups the riders – there are five in the race this week – head down to a local hotel to sign in, before skipping back to make final preparations. Game time.

SINCE its inception in 1953, the Rás Tailteann, as it was then known, has grown into one of the longest-running and best-known stage races in the world. The eight-day event regularly attracts the cream of the sport with countless Rás stage winners, kings of the mountains and overall victors graduating to carve out careers in the paid ranks. None have yet to go on to win the Monte Carlo Grand Prix or replace Jeremy Clarkson as Top Gear presenter; but Bogaerts may well be the first.

The Flemish polyglot slides behind the wheel moments before the gun. He hangs out the window, exchanging banter with rival teams’ staff as he cruises past. The mechanic Benny is relegated to the back seat with his tools and half a dozen spare wheels, as I ride shotgun. He doesn’t speak to me.

For the next four hours, we will hurtle towards Cahirciveen, on as many wheels as the cyclists we’re following for much of the time.

ONE rider, exhausted after a Tour stage, was once asked what he thought of the French countryside. “It looks like the back of cyclist’s arse to me,” he explained, exasperated. To me the 189km between Cobh and Cahirciveen were not dissimilar. But even before I could get yet too familiar with the back end of a peloton, we were stranded in the middle of very a busy South Ring Road in Cork city, attempting to change a flat on David O’Loughlin’s bike.

This was the team’s first puncture of the tour. “It’s you, perhaps,” Bogaerts utters flatly at me as the mechanic hops out of the still-moving car and chases after the rider. It doesn’t go well. As the rest of the competitors build up valuable seconds, Benny fails to clip the spare on – but the frame of the €5,000 bike is cracked.

An irate O’Loughlin bellows through the windscreen at his manager, throwing his arms up in exasperation, as I idly flip through my notebook, whistling. Eventually taking a new bike from the car roof, he’s pushed off towards the pack.

Now the fun starts. The voiture balai or broom car is the vehicle that rides at the back of the riders, to pick up anyone who abandons the race and importantly here, helping to keep the city traffic away from the route. This doesn’t happen and we’re immediately enveloped in a quagmire of local commuters. It is not like this on Eurosport.

Bogaerts speeds alongside his cyclist, beeping the horn like he just won a county championship, and shouting – in a colourful array of languages – at shocked looking civilians. Imagine sitting at a roundabout, trying to tune in Lyric FM and casually checking your teeth for broccoli in the rear view mirror when you see an aluminous green van, driven by a furious and vociferous young man. It becomes apparent he cares little for our customs – traffic lights, road lanes, speed limits – as he chicanes between snaking rows of cars, a cyclist pumping his legs behind to keep up. This is just another day on the pro circuit it seems.

Thanks in no small part to his driving skills, we catch the peloton and O’Loughlin – who was very unlucky not to snatch a stage win the day before – can get back to business.

The Ring of Kerry is spectacular – and a death trap. The radio in the car crackles every now and then and we skid off to get alongside a rider who needs wet gear or wants an energy bar. Each time we whiz past our bumper kisses the threads of the last unfortunate’s rear wheel.But riders trust the team cars always.

Eekhout is part of a group of half a dozen who makes a break for it with mere kilometres to go. Bogaerts is animated and roars at the radio and Benny the mechanic – while I tuck into the team’s sandwiches – as the cavalcade of team cars enter Cahirciveen at last, ahead of the breakaway group. We listen on the radio in silence as the race volunteers relay the result of the sprint finish. The team could really do with a stage victory. I could do with a lift home. But Niko is fifth.

The Kerry town’s main street is hardly the Champs Elysee, and the Ring of Kerry is not L’Alpe d’Huez but, on a bad day at the office, no doubt the effort the riders put in is just as Alpine.

And the driving is extremely continental.

Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter:@adrianrussell

This article first appeared in this morning’s Irish Examiner.

This is Lance Armstrong abandoning the Tour of Ireland yesterday in Cork city centre, just before ‘the monster’ he had come to tame – St Patrick’s Hill – yawned in front of him. The above quote was the honest analysis of a very annoyed American woman who walked back down the hill in front of me after over an hour at least of standing in the most violent Leeside monsoon, still clutching a Livestrong banner.

The conditions were truly crazy and I wouldn’t blame anyone for dipping in for any early shower rather than complete the two circuits of the famous 25% gradient. Mark Cavendish, who I was looking forward to seeing most, I must admit – pulled the same trick as last year and bailed at the bottom too.

But though the Manx star was one of the twin pillars this tour was built upon this year, he’s a sprinter. He doesn’t urge people to come out and see him on the streets, wear his yellow wristbands or, generally, wrap up his sporting endeavours in charitable works. Lance does.

The 37-year-old Armstrong, who travelled from Cork to Dublin last night to host a three-day Global Cancer Summit in the capital, which opens today, tweeted: “rough day on the bike. The ol’ back was not in a good way and St Patty’s Hill wasn’t looking too cozy”.

Let’s forget the apple-pie abbreviation of Patrick’s Hill; the fact is it wasn’t too cosy for thousands of Armstrong’s fans as they stood, soaked to the bone, waiting for him. Shouldn’t he have taken at least one lap of the city centre circuit, maybe?

This was my view – a pretty bad one – of eventual winner Russell Downing climbing his way up the slope. As Gary Imlach said on the television coverage, which I’ve just watched back, “the hill seperated the men from the visiting superstars.” The abandonment was Armstrong’s last act as an Astana rider. I have a feeling, sadly for his many supporters in this part of the world, that the superstar won’t visit next year with his new RadioShack team.

This post first appeared on the Irish Examiner sportsdesk blog.

I’ll be riding shotgun in the Sean Kelly/An Post team car today on Stage 3 of the FBD Insurance Rás from Cobh to Cahirciveen. Follow the progress on twitter @adrianrussell.

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?