One final spin of wheel in Paris for accidental cyclist
Ronan Grimes hopes to sign off from international Para cycling on a high, but whatever happens he knows that he has given his all in pursuit of medal
So this is it for Ronan Grimes. Four events and it’s all done. There will be no 11th hour u-turn. No reprieve. Paris will be the last dance for Ireland’s accidental cyclist. You see Grimes’ story follows a familiar pattern of many
Para athletes. Born with a club foot, he had an operation to fuse metatarsals in his ankles aged 11. At that stage he loved hurling but it didn’t love him. And with that, sport fell out of his life.
It was some 10 years later, on a work placement in Waterford, that he jumped on a bike with a group of locals. And in the same way that sport left his life, it was suddenly back in.
One thing led to another and he entered amateur races and improved. And when he was fitted for a bike, he kicked on again. Along the way, someone mentioned Para cycling. Already “bitten by the bug” as he puts it, he pursued the sport voraciously.
“I would have cycled to college,” Grimes explains. “Cycling wasn’t something unique but racing or being competitive? I never thought of that. But I just got the bug really, really quickly with cycling.
“With running, it was obvious I couldn’t run with a club foot, it was sore and you’d be falling over yourself. But with a bike I never felt like there was anything holding me back.”
Cycling flipped a switch in him. He’s good enough now to ride at the top amateur level in Ireland and travels to Paris as one of the country’s most decorated Para cyclists. His achievements at World and European events have seen him collect medals of every colour at events as varied as time trials, road races and pursuits on the track.
In Tokyo, he was close but not close enough. It left him with the nagging feeling he could do more.
He worked for the Health Products Regulatory Authority, who had been good to him and his sporting aspirations. But in January of this year, he took the plunge and opted to become a full-time athlete.
Whatever happens over the next fortnight, he’ll depart the stage knowing he poured all of himself into Paris 2024. If nothing else, that will give him peace.
“It was a big decision but each
year I was wondering ‘could I be better if I was just on the bike all the time?’ You are never going to know that until you do it. And I didn’t want to finish Paris this year thinking, ‘if I had just done this’ or ‘if I wasn’t doing that that week in work maybe I would have been slightly better’.
“At least now I can look back on these [Olympic] Games when they are over and say I gave it everything for that time and I’ll have no regrets. Because in Tokyo, at the back of my mind I was wondering if I was off for that year would I have been a couple of seconds quicker in the pursuit and would that have been a medal?
“Now I can finish knowing that whatever it is, well that was it. I’ll know I gave it everything.”
The only surprise from the move full-time was that it didn’t automatically mean more time on the road.
“The one difference that has shown, I haven’t increased my miles or hours on the bike, it’s just the recovery piece around it. Before this I would have been going before work and after work, which left you without an evening or down time so that has been the biggest change, the recovery piece, as opposed to the hours on the bike which have stayed relatively similar.”
Most of his training is on his own, and that’s the way he likes it. The little computer on the bike can track whatever metric he’s chasing, be it watts or cadence or heart rate. Some would see it as a lonely existence but Grimes enjoys the solitude of it.
“I do all my training by myself. That could be 25 hours a week on a bike sometimes. Maybe it’s my personality but I love five or six hours on a bike. I think my missus looks at me like I’m crazy but I like that solitude part to it. Like there are very few things that give you six hours to yourself. I do really enjoy it, I could see how it could be lonely but I love that part of it, the training by yourself, which might sound a bit odd.”
He travels to Paris in good shape but is conscious of the ever-improving field he’s competing in.
I think my missus looks at me like I’m crazy, but I like that solitude part to it.
Last year’s ‘SuperWorlds’ cycling championships in Glasgow where able-bodied, para and mountain biking were all crammed into a couple of hectic weeks has prepared him for the crowds he’ll see in Paris. Three years ago, they were absent in the surreal, Covid-restricted surrounds of Tokyo.
A medal would be a fitting end to a glorious career. But whatever happens it will be the end of international competition for the accidental cyclist. He’ll tip away at whatever events at home that take his fancy, but he won’t be part of the cycling programme.
It will be a change, but Grimes insists it’s coming at the right time. He will exit stage left having got far more out of it than he ever imagined.
“You see it a lot in Para sport. You look at people — and I think this has drawn a lot of us to the sport — you see people and they can barely walk. And then they are on a bike and nothing is holding them back, everyone is free and you can express yourself more than when you are hobbling around on your two feet.
“As a sport, it offers a new lease of life to a lot of people, and for me it’s a new world it has opened up to me. That decision to take up cycling was one of the best decisions ever.”
They say college football means more in America’s deep south. On the evidence presented in Dublin this weekend, every minute is its own battle for southern schools. It is why this shock 24-21 victory for Georgia Tech will reverberate across the college football world, the final kick of the game sealing win over a Florida State team who went unbeaten last year.
This is the first time the Aer Lingus College Football Classic has hosted a duel of two schools from southern states, an area of the country where the popularity of collegiate sports dwarfs that of the professional leagues.
The Midwesterners who came in recent years had passion and knew how to have a good time. But for fans of the Seminoles and Yellow Jackets, being a part of the fight was their way of enjoying it — not just on game day, but all week.
Yesterday started with the hounding of ESPN’s College GameDay in the city centre, where FSU fans let their disapproval of the company’s past coverage be known. Signs were drawn up taking aim at analyst Kirk Herbstreit, who drew attention earlier this year when expressing his opinion that Florida State were right to be snubbed for last season’s college playoffs. One read “pin the nose on the clown” with a photo of Herbstreit, others had phrases unbecoming of a family newspaper, but you get the gist.
At every opportunity the FSU fans broke out the Tomahawk chop, a chant where fans move their right arms forwards and back in a move that reflects the team’s link to the Seminoles, the Native American tribe the team is named after. Once the game started, no section of the Aviva’s east stand was silent, as the Georgia Tech fans west of the field sat in the long grass.
As momentum swung mid-play, one side returned to their seats almost as quickly as limbs were raised on the far side, a Mexican wave of expressing superiority that criss-crossed Dublin 4. It didn’t stop there. A receiver drops the ball? The groans are audible in space. Someone gets crunched with a hard tackle? Primitive yells applaud the violence their man used in stopping the bastard.
On Georgia Tech’s first chance to return the ball, the FSU players unleashed the ferocity they’d been building all summer. Four men crashed into the returner, and after the whistle was blown they took their sweet time letting him stand back up. The next play the quarterback was hit with fury behind the line of scrimmage, the clash of helmets crystal in the ears of those in the nosebleeds.
Later, a tackle put in by FSU’s Edwin Joseph in the third quarter on a punt returner was the hardest or hard knocks, a crunch delivered after he sprinted 50 yards with nothing but intent. The manner in which this game was fought is what you expected of a Southern shoot-out.
It might be down to this do-or-die style that the options chosen by the