Rough Ride (3 page)

Delving into one's past can be discouraging, even disturbing. Questioning my mother about how she met my father was awkward. Questioning my father about my childhood was as bad. It's as if they have something very precious which they don't want to share with anyone. It's strange. Maybe I'll feel the same if I have children of my own one day.

Ma (Dublin kids always call their mother 'Ma' and their father 'Da') says I was a dependable child. To illustrate this she tells the pound of sugar story. She would often come in from the shops having forgotten to buy a pound of sugar. This was a major headache because it meant putting my clothes on to go out again. Sometimes she just left me in the middle of the floor, surrounded by kitchen chairs, and sprinted to Geraghty's in Dorset Street for the sugar. When she came back I would always be there, not having moved an inch. A dependable child.

My St David's Primary School teacher Michael O'Braoinain tells me that at school I fought injustice. I would never let him get away with anything unjust even if I risked a clip on the ear for my insubordination. My father says that as a child I was a nightmare – but he's lying, for I know I was good. This is not to say I didn't get my arse tanned on several occasions. But generally I was good. And this is what disturbs me. It's almost a disappointment to discover that I wasn't a tyrant child, unsuccessful at school and on my way to a life in prison only to be saved by athletic prowess. No, I was good, boringly good.

I have a few vague memories of Eccles Street: of the old and very mad woman we frequently met on the road, who terrified me; of my father leaving me to go to the hospital late one night; of Mrs Geraghty's sweet shop in Dorset Street, and one or two other trivial things.

My memory banks started to function when I was six and we moved to Ballymun. I loved it there. Much of that concrete jungle was still being built and I found the building sites fascinating. Ma would leave me in charge of Raphael (I was dependable, remember) and I would drag him around the sites, where we would play. Lipton's Supermarket was another favourite haunt. We would hang out at the incinerator, eating the half-burned rotten vegetables that we found lying around. It was all pretty harmless but Ballymun did have its dangers. My father made the flats' underground basement a strict 'no go' area after a paedophile was reported to have interfered with a neighbour's daughter.

Scuttin' was also taboo. This involved swinging out of the back of the delivery lorries to Lipton's, hanging on till the truck slowed down at a set of traffic lights and then jumping off. Scuttin' was very popular and I found it hard to obey my father. It took at least two or three arse-reddenings to convince me that it wasn't worth it.

It was in Ballymun that I rode my first two-wheeler. Da bought it and immediately removed the two stabilisers. He sat me on the saddle in the small car park in front of the flats and then pushed me off. I wobbled once or twice, but basically had no trouble and was delighted with myself. I loved cycling; from the time I was born it had always been part of my life. Whenever possible, Da would take us to the races to watch him. I loved the races. I loved it when Da gave me a crossbar from the finish to the car after the race was over. I felt so proud. I was fascinated by his legs, the way the bulging muscles shone from the oils he spread on them. But most of all I loved it when he won.

We have a photo at home of him winning a race at Ballyboghil in the north of County Dublin. Raphael and I are both standing on the small school fence overlooking the finishing line. Raphael has his two hands raised and it is clear to see the joy on our faces. Needless to say he lost quite a few as well. I could never understand him losing and when I questioned him his reply was always, 'Sure I have to give the other fellows a chance sometimes.' This infuriated me. I honestly believed him.

I often asked him if he was the best. Here he never lied. No, he was not the best. He was good but not the best. Peter Doyle was the best. He used to point out Peter Doyle to me, and on occasions when the great man came to our house he would ask, 'Paul, do you know who this is?' And, finger in my mouth, I would reply shyly, 'Peter Doyle'. To me, my Da was God, but Peter Doyle was also God.

Being at the races wasn't always a pleasure. I remember an evening race in the Phoenix Park. I stood with my mother as she chatted with the other cycling widows waiting impatiently for the finishing sprint. There was a gasp from the crowd as a rider hit a parked car, flew over the top and landed on the grass verge. I remember leaving my mother's side and running to the crowd that surrounded the motionless groaning body. I was too small to see over them, but I bent down on my knees and, looking through the legs, spotted the rider's number. Number 22. I wasn't sure but expected that it was Da. Then I saw the crash hat. The blue leather crash hat that he always wore: 'It's him, that's my Da.' And then sprinting back to Ma, shouting, 'It's him, it's Da!' And for some crazy reason being glad that my Da was the centre of all the attention. The thought that he might be injured never crossed my mind. He was taken to hospital but got off lightly. His crash hat, split up the middle, had saved him from injury. When I rode my first race I had the same blue crash hat on my head. There were other, classier, hats, but I wanted this one. This was my Da's. Da was God.

I rode my first official race at ten, but the unofficial ones started much earlier. When we moved to Coolock I used to race the neighbours' kids round the block. I always won or nearly always. Davy Casey my next-door neighbour sometimes beat me. This cracked me up. I was a desperately bad loser and would burst into tears of rage when I did. School gave me other opportunities to race. I entered Michael O'Braoinain's class when I was nine. Michael took a great shine to me and instilled in me a new confidence in my academic ability. He made me write poetry and regularly praised my offerings. He also instilled in us an appreciation of Gaelic culture, and he was a great man for playing a jig and a reel on the tin whistle. We laugh about that now. I've played squash with him regularly in the past six months – he claims he always knew I'd end up writing for a living.

In an effort to improve our Irish, Michael organised class trips to the Gaeltacht for a month in the summer. We stayed with a family, Mrs O'Donnel's in Carraroe, a small village twenty-six miles west of Galway. Speaking Irish for an hour a day at school was fine but having to do it non-stop for a month was terribly difficult. Most of us took our bikes and I loved taking off for an hour to discover the lovely Connemara roads. But riding on my own soon became boring. I wanted a challenge.

Before I left for Connemara, my Da had just come back from the Tour of Britain (the Milk Race), where he had worked with the Irish team as a masseur. His stories about it fascinated me and I decided to organise a 'Carraroe Milk Race' among my classmates. Because it was a stage race, I decided I needed food. I knew from going through the pockets of my father's racing jerseys that he often took raisins with him, so I bought a packet of dried raisins at a small grocery shop across the road. I had a bit of a job persuading the others to race, but finally they agreed and I won the first stage easily. But it was too easy and I wasn't satisfied.

For the second stage I decided not to speed off at the start, but to stay with them for the first mile and then fake a crash. I chose the spot for falling off, a patch of gravel on a corner, as I was planning the circuit. The race started and I skidded purposefully on the gravel in front of the others, making sure they saw me and then jumped back on the bike, caught them and beat them. Persuading them to ride a third stage was now a real problem. I offered them a big handicap before setting out in pursuit. But I was too generous. I soon realised I wasn't going to catch them. I couldn't face being beaten, so I took a short cut that reduced my deficit. I came out just behind the leader, Pat O'Grady, and I passed him for my third win. But he saw me cheating. There was a big argument, and the fourth stage and the race were cancelled.

I was glad to go home at the end of the trip because I was homesick. A month later my father started working on an old racing frame of his. He bought some new parts for it and started putting it together. I hoped it might be for me, but didn't dare ask. My suspicions were confirmed when he presented me with it a week later. I couldn't believe it, a real racer with gears. He asked me if I wanted to ride in the under-age championships in Phoenix Park that Sunday. I did, so he took me on a training ride.

We left the house and headed for Balgriffin. He instructed me on the rules of a game we were to play. The idea was for me to stay behind him and to count to twenty, then I was to pass him and he would count to twenty, and so on. The second part was that I had to ride as hard as I could while at the front – not that I needed any encouragement. At Balgriffin we turned right and straight down to the seafront, then left to Portmarnock and back in the Malahide road, about ten miles in all. The ride finished with a finishing sprint and my Da just pipped me for first to the road sign – although I knew he was faking. When we got back to the house I was shattered, absolutely wrecked. Da sat me down in a chair and asked me if I still wanted to race. After getting the bike, I didn't think 'no' was the right answer so I said that I did.

'Well, that's fine but you must remember, Paul, that in cycling you will experience more heartbreak than happiness.'

God, Da, how right you were.

I don't remember much about my first race, which is unusual when you consider how vivid the memory of beating my classmates in Carraroe remains. Most of the lads were much older than me and I think I finished second to last.

I started going out on regular Sunday runs that winter. A few clubs would meet outside the General Post Office and it wasn't unusual for a thirty-strong peloton to ride out of the city. Most of the lads were from a club on the south side, Orwell Wheelers, so I joined them. When I was riding home a week or two later I noticed one other lad from the group heading in the same direction. He told me he lived in Glin Drive in Coolock and was in the Obelisk Wheelers. Martin Earley was a month younger than me and had only just started cycling. We soon became best friends.

Although I was only eleven, I started taking cycling very seriously. As soon as I came in from school, I'd meet up with Martin and we'd head off for an hour's training. I won two races in my first full year, both times beating Martin in a sprint finish. In the years that followed, the rivalry between us became too great for our friendship and from the age of fifteen until we both turned professional we became bitter rivals.

Looking back on the early years I can't help laughing at the sacrifices I made for my new sport in my quest to reach the top. But this had its advantages. It protected me from that dangerous adolescent period when teenagers are tempted by all sorts of outside influences such as smoking, drinking, drugs and women. Cycling shielded me from all of this. I lived for the school bell on Friday nights. Every second weekend, the Orwell organised youth hostelling weekends to hostels in Wicklow, Meath or Louth. As soon as the bell rang, I'd dash home and pack a sleeping bag, food and spare clothes for the weekend into the carrier of the bike and then speed into town to meet the lads.

It was through youth hostelling with the Orwell that I first met Stephen Roche. One of my best friends in the club, Paul (Smidler) Smith, asked me to go hostelling with him one weekend. I rode across to Paul's house in Dundrum, and when I arrived he decided he would ask his neighbour, 'Rochee', if he wanted to come along. 'Rochee' was totally unprepared when we knocked on his door; but he said he would join us at the hostel, Baltyboys near Blessington in County Wicklow, next morning.

Smidler and I cycled off in the pitch dark of the night to Baltyboys and, sure enough, Rochee turned up at the hostel next morning with all his gear, having left Dundrum at first light. They decided (being youngest, I always followed) that we should go to Aghavannagh, which meant a long haul over two mountains; Glenmalure and Aghavannagh. On the slopes of Glenmalure, in a small dry ditch at the side of the road, we bivouacked. Tinned fruit salad, my Ma's best fruit cake and a can of Coke. We munched away in the spitting rain, and laughed and joked about how lucky we were. Then it was back on the bikes and the climb to the Shay Elliot monument, where some film-makers were shooting a clip for
The Thirty-Nine Steps.
The evening meal at the hostel was real 'gourmet' stuff: packet soup, beans, smash and sausages, tinned rice and fruit cake.

Oh, how I loved those weekends. They were completely carefree and wonderful. I'd arrive home, totally knackered, to my Ma's hot apple tart and a mountain of homework. Stephen and I still talk with great affection of those weekends, planning each time to do it once more for old time's sake, but knowing that something will come up to prevent it happening. Could it ever be the same? Probably not, and maybe it is this which prevents us doing it again. But remembering is a joy in itself. When I compare the professional life with its glamour, its corruption and its suffering with those innocent times, I scratch my head and wonder why I bothered.

I stayed on at school until my final exams for the Leaving Certificate. When I left, a friend of my Da's, Peter Brambell, gave me a job binding blocks at a cement-block-making plant five miles from our house. It was great to be earning a few bob, and I enjoyed the work and the new freedom. But my Ma wasn't having me binding blocks for the rest of my life, and she made me apply for every job that appeared in the newspapers. When I wrote my address on the application forms, she always made sure that I wrote Artane instead of Coolock because Artane was much more fashionable. I had an interview for a plumbing apprenticeship at Dublin Airport and was offered the job. I started work immediately.

When I entered the airport in September 1979, I was seventeen and still cycling mad. As a junior, I was perhaps one of the ten best in the country but was a long way off being in the top three. Martin Earley was easily the best junior. This infuriated me and incited me to train even harder. For the 1980 season, my last as a junior, we formed a club of our own, Tara Road Club. Raphael and Gary Thompson were my team-mates, Da was team manager. He oversaw our training and planned team tactics. He was merciless in his approach. In return for his time he demanded full dedication. Bed at 9.30, hard training, tidy appearance and, above all, honesty. He never accepted excuses and he loved attacking, aggressive riding. We were a phenomenal success. From March to July we won every single race we entered. Sometimes myself, sometimes Raphael, sometimes Thompson – but always a Tara man. But the bubble burst at the junior championships in Lurgan. The whole field rode against us – and, to rub salt in the wound, Martin Earley was champion. In our three years as juniors, he was twice champion while I had just one silver for second. The dice seemed always to roll for him and fall off the table for me. I despised him.