No regrets over avoiding the cycling drugs scene

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

Cycling has to be one of the most gruelling, punishing sports . . . marathon distances, steep climbs over the harshest of terrains and sprint finishes that demand every ounce of energy that the body and soul can muster.

Former Galway and Ireland cyclist Mike McNena may have some regrets but when it came to the decision to dabble in performance enhancing drugs to further his career the decision was one of the easiest he ever had to make.

For him, the 38-year-old, who recently returned to cycling to complete the demanding eight stage Rás for charity (National Cancer Research Unit in Galway), they were never a temptation.

“No, never,” says McNena, who rode for a number of semi-professional clubs in France and Italy throughout the 1990s. “I loved trying to beat fellows who were on it.”

So talented was McNena – a Galway Sports Star winner in 1994 and ’97 – the taking of drugs could possibly have levelled the playing field and secured him that elusive professional contract but, again, he reiterates that was not the type of person he wanted to become.

“I wouldn’t have gone down that road because it always catches up with you, on the health side of things or in some other way. A coach did say to me one time he would take care of me and I knew it wasn’t a training programme he was on about. That though was all that ever came of it.”

In the late 1990s, revelations of the practice and culture of drug-taking in the sport began to make news headlines around the world. By association, almost every cyclist was deemed guilty and McNena recalls an incident

“I remember when I came second in the Tour of Japan and I flew back into Marseille and customs stopped me. They always stopped you in ’98 because that is when the Tour de France scandal came out. So, they pulled me over and searched me.

“There were three policemen there and they found the medal, second overall, and I told them what it was for. They were talking among themselves and they were saying he definitely has drugs in the bag if he was second. I started to say ‘hang on; don’t paint us all with the one brush’.

“What saved me was there was a policeman in the airport who used to cycle. He had recognised me and he said this fellow is grand. But they had taken the bag apart just trying to find something. That was the way it was back then.”

The sport has cleaned up a lot – and this has been reflected in results and times – but, sadly, it has come too late for a plethora of Irish riders. “I think if the lads I was riding with in the Irish team were riding now, we would all be pro,” he remarks. “It was just the wrong time.”

That said, McNena still had great times and the affectation he has for one of his former teams, Vélo Club La Pomme-Marseille, is unmistakable. “VC La Pomme are a great club for young people going into it. They have done it the right way. It was always about [building up from] the underage for them.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.