Everyone knows what it is to cycle a bike up a hill. The burn of the lungs and the ache in legs is a glorious, painful expression of what it is to be alive. It is a feeling that connects adults to their childhood and is something that can be maintained throughout a life.
It is arguable that no sport has had quite an extraordinary history in this country as cycling. And a central partof that history is the RásTailteann. The Rás had been staged every year between 1953 and 2018, until it lapsed this year the organisershaving been unable to find a sponsor.
The launch this week of a revived seven-stage RásTailteann is a thing to becelebrated. A newly-formed promotions group consisting of long-time volunteers, Cáirde Rás Tailteann, hasannounced that it will run the event next year.
They have the support of the previous race organisers — led by the inimitable Dermot Dignam — and the shared desire to see a treasuredsporting institution reinstated is a credit to all involved.
The initial establishment of the Rás in 1953 built on a long and glorious history of men and women racing each other on bicycles for more than 150 years. Back in the boneshaker days, before the invention of the modern bicycle, the first cycling club in Ireland was founded in Dungarvan byRichard E. Brenan, a photographer, in 1869. That same year the club held a cycle race in the town for a challenge cup — Brenan duly won the race.
During the many sports days that proliferated in Irish towns and villages during the 1870s and 1880s, bicycle racing became an integral part of events.
The importance of bicycle racing as a sport was dramatically increased with the arrival of the modern bicycle in the 1880s. This saw both genders take to the wheel.
An example of how important bicycle racing was comes from Tralee. During the first months of 1885, the Tralee Sports Committee laid down a cinder track for athletics and cycling events. Around this ground, a new stand and palisade was being erected, at the cost of some £1,200. The cinder track at Tralee remained in place until 1929, when it was removed to facilitate the enlargement of the pitch.
Similarly, major cycle races were routinely held at Croke Park and were a huge draw for the public. Leading Irish cyclists such as HarryDonnelly were feted for their successes, with huge crowds turning up to see them compete. In the 1920s and 1930s, bicycle racing remained embedded in the sporting culture of Ireland, even if it did not quite match the popular fanaticism which it inspired across continental Europe.
But cycling was more than capable of provoking immense passions in Ireland. This was not just the passion of play, but also the passion of politics. Take, for example, the extraordinary split in cycling that occurred after partition.
In the decades after partition, there emerged a split which saw the Republic ofIreland enjoy the luxury of having two governing bodies for the sport.
To put it in simple terms — the National Cycling Association claimed jurisdiction over all 32 countiesand Cumann Rothaíocht Éireann recognised the border and restricted itself to 26 counties. There was also a Northern Ireland Cycling Federation operating in the six counties.
There’s no easy way to dress this up: The National Cycling Association consideredCumann Rothaíocht Éireann to have sold out on northern nationalists and simply deemed them to a ‘gang of traitors’.
Tales of their disagreements — and they were many and extensive and deep — extend far beyond Irish shores. Perhaps the best example of the scale of the animosity was manifest at the 1955 World Amateur Cycle Road Race Championships which were held in Rome.
Both associations travelled across to Italy and claimed to be there to represent ‘Ireland’. They both took to the startline and planned to race — but just before the race started, they became involved in a fist-fight which ended in imprisonment and international press coverage.
There were other incidents — not least, as Tom Daly has explained in his magnificent history of Rás Tailteann, The Rás — The Story of Ireland’s Unique Bike Race, a failed attempt to extinguish the Olympic Flame at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and the manner in which an official Irish competitor was pulled from his bike by a protesting Irish competitor during the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
IT was in the context of this rivalry that the Rás Tailteann was established in 1953 by the Republicans who ran the National Cycling Association.
It is worth noting that men involved in this race were also involved in the IRA’s Border Campaign of the later 1950s.
As for the Rás, beginning as a two-day cycle race, it eventually grew as long as 10 days, with cyclists traversing Ireland in stages.
Daly’s magnificent history of that race gets to the very heart of what ensued: “Probably the most demanding sporting event in the country, it touched the psyche of the sporting nation from its inception and became the subject of the dreams and aspirations of Irish cyclists. For the leading riders, success in the Rás was the ultimate prize. For the ordinary rider, the race itself was the prize.”
This ‘magical grip’ the Rás had on those who raced,was shared by many of those who came to see it. The passage of one of the stages of the Rás through a town or a village or any rural area was a significant local event; it was something that was anticipated with great enthusiasm.
And for the men who won the Rás, superstardom in an Irish context was assured. But it was not just the winners who garnered fame. Men such as Gene Mangan, Shay O’Hanlon and Paddy Flanagan were feted for their exploits.
As Tom Daly writes, the very fact of having competed in and completed the Rás was something worthy of note: “We would try, usually unsuccessfully, to catch a glimpse of the local man, an individual who, in parochial communities, would always carry the distinction of having ridden the Rás.”
The fact that riders competed as part of county teams and also on national teams added a particular local spice to everything.
But this is no mere local tale. From the 1960s, the Rás had featured the curiousphenomenon of ‘communist’ teams coming to compete — these teams were themselves often drawn from other internationally disaffected cycling bodies from Eastern Europe.
From the 1970s, the race was extended to allow the inclusion of cyclists from Cumann Rothaíocht Éireann and the Northern Ireland Cycling Federation.
The Rás expanded and became part of the elite calendar of international cycling.
All of these stories are now being collected in a broader cycling historical project that is a collaboration between the UCD Archives, the UCD School of History and Cycling Ireland.
All material — documents, photographs and recording — of the history of cycling up to 2007 will be accepted and anyone interested in donating to the archive, or who might have any queries, can contact Ciarán McKenna, Cycling Ireland (ciaran.mckenna@cyclingireland.ie) or Kate Manning, UCD Archives (kate.manning@ucd.ie, +353-1-7167547).
The intersection between sport and politics, as revealed through the story of Irish cycling and especially the Rás, is endlessly interesting. The personalities who are central to this story have a powerful history to tell. This archive will be an invaluable international resource for sports historians around the world — and will also be of great value tohistorians of modern Ireland.
Paul Rouse is professor of history at University College Dublin.
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Paul Rouse: Irish cycling history was often more rough than smooth - Irish Examiner
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