Archive News
Galway cyclists ready for Tour de France torture
Date Published: 05-Jul-2012
IT may be the likes of Fabian Cancellara, Peter Sagan, Tejay van Garderen and British duo Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish capturing the imagination of Tour de France followers at the moment, but come July 14 it will be the turn of a Galway team of cyclists to experience the essence of one of the world’s greatest sporting events.
In all, 14 Galway cyclists will take on a stage of the Tour – L’Etape du Tour – and, in particular, the terrifying Col De Tourmalet to raise money for the Children’s Sunshine Home and Laura Lynn House, Ireland’s only hospice for children.
Leading the group is one of Galway’s most accomplished cyclists, James O’Donnell, who joins Knocknacarra’s Pete Kelly and Mervue’s John McGrath in chatting to Talking Sport about the mad-cap venture which meanders through some of the demanding climbs in the French Pyrenees.
For his part, O’Donnell completed a similar stage last year and, indeed, he has ridden other stages of the tour for the National Council of the Blind. This one, though, is the big dog. For the Tour elite, the Col de Tourmalet is where reputations are made and, more often, broken.
“There are about 10,000 people doing it and you just don’t have all day to do it,” explains O’Donnell. “There is a cut-off time for it. So, if you are not fit enough, you won’t finish it. The cut off time is usually 12 hours but we would expect to be all in around 10 hours.
“Along the route, there are three checkpoints, so if you don’t make it over the checkpoint, they shut off the route. That is why there is such an emphasis on fitness training. Basically, you will be ‘bused’ to the finish line if you don’t make the checkpoint in time. It is for the participants’ safety; that they don’t have people spread out all over the Pyrenees late into the night.”
Just looking at a map of the acute peaks the Galway riders will take on – two days prior to the Tour de France peleton’s arrival – O’Donnell laughs that the topography of the stage looks “like a crocodile’s mouth”.
He continues: “It is probably one of the toughest stages I have ever done. The climbs on it are long. The problem on it also is that you don’t know what way the weather will be. Last year, we had 40 degrees and the following day when we went over the climbs there were people who had to be rescued from snow on it.”
The idea for this venture came from two of the cyclists, Bernard Carr and Kevin Kearney. “It kind of grew arms and legs from that. Two more wanted to do it and then four and now there are 14 people signed up to do it,” says O’Donnell.
“We started getting names of those interested around October and November. We just kind of got a feel on who was keen on it and told them the reality of what was involved. Then coming in to Christmas, we started getting a couple of spins together, informal, just to get people cycling.
“After Christmas, we got a structured training going. It was just a case of getting lads used to riding a bike . . . doing everything from the basics of getting the bike out of the car to doing the distances we are doing. Lads got to learn how to ride in a group and use a group rather than having everybody heading off and becoming scattered all over the place.”
He says it was a big learning curve for the majority of the group but through the training sessions and local charity events, such as the Croí Cycle, they began to put miles on the clock. Still, for some, it was a shock to the system. No more so than for Mervue native, John McGrath.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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