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Rás Over The Years Imagine it. You are two-thirds of the way down a snaking line, a wriggling arrow of riders which hugs the sheltered side of the road. Eyes fixed on the spinning wheel in front, a spray of filthy water channelling up onto your face, into your eyes, into your gaping, oxygen-hungry mouth. The water obscures your vision but still you persist, remaining desperately in the sanctuary of the slipstream. Just an inch or two from being exposed to the cruel wind which would rip your screaming legs apart. Just an inch or two from tipping that shimmering rubber strip in front of you and plunging out of control to the ground. Concentrate. Concentrate on holding your place. Concentrate on avoiding the lethal hazards on the road surface which suddenly appear in front of you. A distant, disembodied voice up ahead roars "hole left" and you swing outwards, narrowly missing the crater which would send you smashing into the ditch. Behind you, you hear a thud, a curse and the hiss of air which jets from a tubular, ripped asunder by the asphalt anomaly. Poor bastard. Forget him. Concentrate. You grip the bars, hunched low over the bike. A sore back, aching shoulders and burning chest eat into your resolve, dwarfed only by the torture taking place in your lower limbs. Ease back, they plead. Sit up. You ignore the protestations. Concentrate. Seeking to distract the mind, you focus on the digital displays before you. One tracks the exertion of your heart, the transmitter strapped to your chest relaying the signal to the monitor and telling you that the straining pump is working overtime at 180 beats per minute. Beside it, a record of that other crucial parameter, which confirms what your legs are going through. Thirty-two miles an hour. Thirty-two point five. Thirty- three. The speed climbs as some insatiable sadist forges off the front. You curse. You spit. You hang on for grim death. Then the gaps appear. Not directly in front of you, for you are locked tight to that spinning strip of rubber ahead. But two or three riders up the line, daylight is poking its way through the links in the chain as one struggles. You hear his breathing, hear the futile crunch of his gears as he searches desperately for more pace, see the rock of his shoulders and the useless, ominous swing of his head. Not now, you think, 'O God not now'. He swings to one side, spent, useless. The next in line dips his head, grits his teeth and the ten feet become eight. The eight become six, then four. The gap closes. Legs on fire, lungs tearing themselves apart, you bury yourself as the line becomes one again. Then, in a moment of sudden lucidity through the ravages of lactic acid, that old phRáse comes back to you. "Spent the day chewing the handlebars". It suddenly makes perfect sense. You'd laugh if you didn't have another 80 miles to endure in this purgatory. You'd laugh if you weren't so set on becoming one of the 'Men of the Rás.' It is almost certainly the toughest sporting event in the country. But what drives these maniacs, this breed of brightly coloured, Lycra-clothed individuals with shaven, hypertrophic legs? Heroism? Masochism? Or just plain insanity? Dave Tansey works with his father in Joe Daly's bike shop on the edge of Dundrum village. For 50 weeks of the year he deals with the customers, taking in bicycles for repairs, suggesting the most suitable model for the prospective buyer and generally doing his best to earn a living. But come the middle of May, he turns the key in the lock of that blue wooden door and heads off on his annual two-wheeled pilgrimage. But there is something else which drives the spirit. Like those who run, jelly-legged on the edge of exhaustion to complete 26 and one-quarter miles, or dangle by a frozen, frost- bitten fingertip on the way to the summit, achievement comes from redefining one's limits. From suffering en route to succeeding. In digging deep to rise high. Consider Tansey's description of the severity of the race and you understand what it means to compete: "On a scale of one to ten, it is a ten, or even off the scale. Every day is like a battle. Whether you are in the first group or in the last group, you are riding at the limit of your ability. "In terms of toughness, when you get to the sixth or seventh day, you just get so fatigued and worn out how I know I am getting rough is by that stage, my toenails are getting tired," he says with a laugh. "That's the way it is with me even my teeth feel knackered. Your whole body is just running on empty. So basically all you want to do at the end of the day is get a bit of rest, get some food into you, have a massage and try to recover for the next day. Your whole thought process is just focused on the race I can't even concentrate on reading the paper. You are just thinking about the race all the time and trying to conserve as much energy as possible. "The first time I completed it was special for me, I have to say, because I thought I would never ever finish the Rás and that at 26 I was maybe a bit too old for it. The finish was in Dun Laoghaire that year. I was next to tears at the end. It was very emotional to complete it because after putting yourself through such physical hell for nine days and then reach the finish it was incredible. You get a great high, a great sense of achievement at actually getting there." All that effort, for neither love nor money. The late Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, would be proud of the attitude. Yet both have the same affection for the Rás. Still travelling on the race each year, where he drives journalists and guests around the route, O'Hanlon speaks of the competition with great warmth. When asked about his first win all of 37 summers ago, the answer is equally passionate. "It meant everything," he says. "I had been waiting three years to do it, I had planned how I was going to do it and carried out the plan. You couldn't ask for better than that." With his vast success in the race, it is inevitable that many of the stories which make up the race's rich heritage feature O'Hanlon as protagonist. He singles out one exploit which particularly pleased him, on the road from Ballinasloe to Castleisland in the 1967 edition. Twenty-two years later, the scale of the feat still impresses. "It was a very long stage of 180 kilometres and, as far as I can remember, the wind was against us. We were going up the town, I had the yellow jersey on (as race leader) and the flag dropped. I did a sort of ritualistic jump up the road and two or three guys came with me. Next thing, within a mile we were away, doing bit and bit; we got a minute up the road but had 180 kilometres to do. It was much too far to go, to be up the road in a group of three or four. And yet, at the same time you didn't want to sit up and go back to the bunch because you don't give away a minute just like that. It was a real 'between a rock-and-a-hard place' choice. " "And then I remember telling some fella who was on the Kildare team to go back and tell Paddy Flanagan (a team-mate on the Dublin squad) to come up here, to escape out of the bunch and come up, that we needed a few more. But Flanagan wouldn't do it. Then halfway through the stage a couple of guys came up and a couple of fellas got dropped but between the jigs and the reels, two of us out of the original break of four stayed there to the finish. I think we got first and second on the day." Needless to say, it was O'Hanlon who capped off four hours and 42 minutes of holding a chasing bunch at bay to register the stage victory. Bravado, backed up with a steely mixture of courage and stubbornness. To this day, it ranks as one of the great Rás rides. But 45 years of history have produced many other fine anecdotes, snippets of the culture in which the Rás is steeped. Heroism, determination, ambition and athleticism are all exemplified but so too are tragedy, heart- break and failure. The best, and worst, of human experience. There are even elements of comedy, as O'Hanlon recounts. "It was 1959. Cecil Donaghue from Dublin took the first stage, then, on the next stage into Longford, Mick Palmer won and got the jersey. The following day the race was going to Westport, to his home town but Cecil Donaghue was still close up on him so the Dublin team decided we would have to mark Palmer. This fellow called Dennis McGrath was told 'you go and sit on Palmer's wheel.' "It was our first year but he was told 'you sit on Palmer and whatever he does, you just follow him. You just deny him'. Dennis was contrary, Dennis sat on him and Palmer, instead of keeping his eye on the ball, got bogged down with Dennis and started fighting with him. It ended up that they went out of the back of the bunch. Palmer actually stopped and rode in a circle on the road to try to get rid of McGrath. He lost the jersey that day, and finished a way down coming into his home town, all because he got a bit diverted ..." 'The men of the Rás.' Chances are, if you are near the race route on a given day between May 15 and 23 this year, you will hear mention of this phRáse. A memoir of the old days, a legacy of the awe with which yesteryear regarded the race, it is a throw- back to harder, more appreciative times. The riders still toil to complete the race, the champions still indulge in what the French refer to as 'exploits' but Satellite TV and Murdockism have conspired to rob such events of their mystique. It shouldn't be so. Look to any other domestic sporting event and you would be hard pushed to find a similar degree of dedication, a better example of athletic achieve- ment. Check the list of previous participants and you will find the crème-de-la-crème of international cycling. Not only former Irish professionals Stephen and Laurence Roche, Martin Earley, Paul Kimmage and Alan McCormack but also a selection of world and Olympic champions such as Bart Brenjens and Tony Doyle. Current top professionals Patrick Jonker, Wladimir Belli and Giuseppi Guerini (who between them have registered stage wins in races such as the Tour of Italy, Settimana Bergamasca, Tour of Portugal and a 12th finish place in the Tour de France) have also put their signatures to the Rás sign-on sheet. Philip Cassidy won the race in 1983, has ridden 14 editions and to date has worn the yellow jersey 16 times. He's in little doubt as to the value of the Rás and argues that it is deserving of an international ranking. "The big thing is that it is a race like a huge marathon but anybody can enter. You can be a first year senior with no results, nothing of note done in your career but you can enter the Rás and ride it if you want to make the effort to finish it. Yet, at the other end of the spectrum you can have world champions riding it. It is quite unique. I have ridden all sorts of races abroad. I have ridden four Tours of Britain, the Tour of Europe basically, everything there is to ride on the amateur scene. A lot of those races are very intensive. But my opinion is, if you are racing in the Rás, if you are racing for the win or racing to be in contention, it is as hard, if not harder, than any of them. Mentally it is very difficult and it definitely has the potential to be a good international race if they (the organisers) got the UCI points." For race organiser Dermot Dignam, that is one of the goals. Looking ahead. Building up. Aiming higher. But in the meantime, he is in charge of a fine race, which remains an institution in Irish sport. Each year it acts as a pointer to emerging talent, like the 1998 winner Ciarán Power. Each year it provides some dramatic racing, making champions out of those who win. Making heroes of those who finish. And occasionally, just occasionally, a moment of uncharacteristic grace in one of the toughest sports going. "On one of the hardest stages I can remember, about two years ago, we were heading into Tramore along the coast," says Dave Tansey. "It was the reverse route to the way the Tour went last year, through Dungarvan, on wide open roads which were rolling up and down. There seemed to be these surges, like you'd be in the gutter, it'd ease off for a bit and then it'd get going again. I had worked myself right up to the top ten riders and said to myself 'this is great. I'm going to hold this wheel and nobody is going to get the space I have'. Next minute one of these big Dutch guys comes back along the line it was one of Bart Brentjens' (Olympic mountain bike cham- pion) team-mates. I said to myself, 'he's not getting in here, I'm holding onto this wheel.' And then he pulls up right beside me and says, 'excuse me, would you mind if I pulled in in front of you', in perfect English. I was just so thrown by this, I eased off and bang, he was in. And that was me, pffffff," says Tansey, pointing backwards and laughing. "The head was gone and I just cracked. I was expecting him to start muscling in on me, I was all ready to give him a few elbows back, but 'excuse me please...?'" The Gentlemen of the Rás? Now I've heard everything. |
Since its inception in 1953, the Rás Tailteann has become one of the institutions of Irish sport. Now known as the FBD Milk Rás due to sponsorship of the nine-day event, the route covers hundreds of miles as it snakes around the highways and byways, up hill and down dale and through every weather imaginable. This year (1999), for example, the riders will clock up 800 miles over some of the hardest terrain in the country, as they plot a clockwise direction through Waterford, across to Cork, then up along the western side of the country into the high- lands of Donegal, before dropping diagonally across the map towards the eventual finish in Dublin. Along the way, there are four stages of over 100 miles to endure, along with the legendary, backbreaking climbs of the Glengesh Pass, the Windy Gap and Carnmore Rock. Sounds gruelling? Imagine nine marathon races in a row, over far more difficult slopes than your average pair of Asics will ever have to deal with, and you are getting close. And all at an average speed of over 25 miles an hour.
Fuelled by dreams of success? Well, no, not exactly. As a hard-working amateur competing against full-time international riders, Tansey is quick to state that his target is to finish the Rás, not to take the yellow jersey of race leader. For him, the race itself is the prize. But still he will train week in, week out from the previous November right up to the drop of the flag in order to achieve the necessary physical condition to complete the race. Hundreds of hours spent clocking up thousands of miles, but taking part in the showpiece event of the sport makes the dedication all worthwhile. "The race itself has a great heritage, "he states, explaining why he and others will flog themselves half to death just to finish. "You get a great reception when you arrive into towns around the country or even going through the villages along the route all the schoolkids turn out and cheer you along. The local people come and encourage you as well, so it just gives you a great buzz," he enthuses. "Generally cycling doesn't have great appeal for spectators but, because of the history of the race, because it has been going for so long now and due to the fact that it goes all around the country, people relate to it a lot better. For some of the small towns around the country, to have it pass through is a bit of a privilege, they seem to come out and enjoy the spectacle and it all adds to the ambience of the race. You feel like a rock star for the week," he adds as an afterthought, a smile lighting up his face.
Sé O'Hanlon, on the other hand, was driven by a different force. As winner of an unequalled four Rás Tailteanns (1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967), the Dubliner holds just about every record of note in the race. O'Hanlon tops the list of stage winners (24 in all), yellow ]erseys worn (37, between 1962 and 1973) and is one of only two men to lead the race from start to finish, a feat achieved in three out of four of his Rás wins. Talented, confident and fuelled by what he describes as 'a neurosis, a fear of being beaten', he won his first title by an astounding 20 minutes. As much as someone like Dave Tansey epitomises the grit and determination needed to compete in the race, O'Hanlon represents the athletic excellence required to win the thing.