2017 Track Cycling World Championships: Hong Kong Velodrome (April 12-16 April, Live on BBC2)
“You can’t think: ‘my legs are sore, my arms are sore…’ I’m a big believer in just ‘put your head down and get on with it’. There’s nobody going to do it for you – if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”
Mark Downey
YOU could have been forgiven for thinking Mark Downey came from nowhere to win a UCI World Cup gold medal in Holland late last year. But you’d have been wrong.
And anyone who dismissed that win as a fluke was quickly proved wrong too.
Another pair of gold medals came hot on the wheels of the first when the racer from Dromore in county Down won in Columbia and then the USA and Downey is now a serious contender for Ireland at this week’s Track Cycling World Championships in Hong Kong.
This country has produced cycling greats like Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly but just one world champion - Martin Irvine in the scratch race back in 2013. When Downey gets to the line on Friday at the Hong Kong Velodrome he’ll be among a 40-man field over a 40k course that includes superstars like Kenny De Ketele and Australia’s Cameron Myer and they’ll be watching his every move.
The youngest of five kids in a cycling-mad family, he comes from thoroughbred stock. Dad Seamus was an Olympian and older brother Sean was a medallist at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Mark has been in the saddle almost since he could walk and his success arrived so quickly that it caught even him a little off guard.
“I can’t believe how it went from the first one to getting three,” he said.
“They always say the first one can be a fluke so it was nice to do the second one in Columbia and to go on to LA and do the third one with Felix English (in the Madison event) was pretty huge.
“I don’t think people realise it at home because track cycling isn’t really big, but the way I explain it is it’s like the World Cup in football because there were 42 nations competing. To win in November was a big moment in my career and I thought it was going to be a hard one to beat but to have three medals now… I saw myself on TV and I thought: ‘flip, that’s actually me there’.”
His rivals will have been watching too. In Hong Kong he’ll ride the points race – a test of tactics, power and endurance over 160 laps – on Friday and the Madison event in (with team-mate English) on Sunday.
Downey singles out long-term hero Meyer as his main rival in the points race.
“I would say – and I’m not being cocky or anything – that I’d start as favourite with Meyer,” he said.
“He’s probably the best points racer of all time – I think he won the world championships four years in-a-row. He took a break from track cycling and went out on the road in the Tour de France, but now he’s back.
“He was my childhood hero because the points race was always the race that I loved. Me and my dad always used to talk about him, it was like he was born to be a track rider and he makes everything look easy.
“He’s my hero but he has a number pinned on his back for the race and that’s the way it has to be. It’s competition and I go to the race to win. I’m confident that the last two races I rode, I rode well and I think I’m going into the World Championships better than ever.”
You don’t have to dig too far into the family gene pool to see where his talent comes from. The success Mark and his Sean have had can be traced back to their dad Seamus and the rickety old boneshaker he put together from bits and pieces way back when cycling was an escape from working on the family farm.
“My Saturdays were spent with a graip and a wheelbarrow,” Seamus recalls with a laugh.
If the choice was forking cow dung out of a shed or riding to Warrenpoint with his mates it was simple one - Seamus was heading for the seaside.
He recalls: “My aunt Molly lived in Maghaberry beside a dump and any chance we got to go to her house I was in the dump trying to find bits of bicycles.
“We had to walk about a mile and-a-half to school and my idea was to get a bike so I didn’t have to.”
Everything usable was used and with trademark ingenuity he knocked together what he describes as “a traditional black bike”. It soon became obvious that his interest in cycling was no passing fancy and, after joining Banbridge Cycling Club, he upgraded to a Gordon racer.
Aged 16, Seamus was picked for Northern Ireland to race in Scotland. At 21, he raced for Ireland in the Tour de Lyon in France. The following year, 1982, he competed in the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane and two years later rode for Ireland at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. In searing heat he came in 43rd in a field of 135 riders (only 55 finished the course).
“I was only making up the numbers,” he says, far too modestly.
“Mark is doing much better than I did. I was competing on the world stage, he’s winning on the world stage. Doing what Mark’s doing, winning gold medals, in any sport that’s something special.
“I did it see it coming, but I’m not going to boast and say: ‘He’s going do this, or he’s going to do that… But you would always say ‘that guy has talent’. Sean has it too, a natural ability for riding bikes.
“He achieved a lot, he gave us some brilliant years and Mark would be the first man to say that Sean inspired him to go where he has.”
Sean had talent, what he didn’t have was luck. As a teenager test results at Manchester Velodrome showed he had more natural power than Bradley Wiggins at the same age and when he signed with French racing team VC La Pomme a bright future in the sport looked assured.
But a crash in the Pyrenees back in 2010, when, in his words, he “headbutted the road”, left him scarred mentally and physically.
He suffered a cracked eye socket and needed 14 stitches in his face but his shattered confidence took longer to heal although he battled back bravely to win his bronze at the Commonwealth Games.
His days of travelling the globe are over but he’s a happy man now living at home and earning a living working for Sky having shelved his ambitions of riding for their team one day.
“I’m very proud of what I did and everybody that knows me knows what I was capable of,” he said.
“It didn’t turn out the way it could have, but a lot of that was down to the accident. The way I look at it, there’s other things in life. I’m working now and back at home and really enjoying it. I’m happy.”
Mark benefits from his experience at every fork in the road.
“I’m proud of him, I get so excited,” said Sean.
“He’s a far better rider than me and he’s proving that now. It would have been good if we’d raced together at some stage but it never worked out that way.
“The beauty about him is he can avoid the mistakes I made. I made a lot of mistakes in my time and I’m keeping him grounded now. Whenever you get to that level people want a piece of you but you have to learn to say ‘no’ and stand on your own two feet.
“The same in training, you have to know what your body is capable of and I’ve been there and done it so I can keep Mark right.”
He’s obviously doing a good job of that and Mark – a European medallist at underage level – is well aware of the life he has to lead and that there’s a fine line between the podium and the peleton.
“I saw how hard it was for Sean,” says Mark.
“I saw how many kicks in the face he got. Every time he started to go well he got an injury. He put the work in and he didn’t get the rewards, he had crashes in his career and that’s not all down to you, it’s down to the people around you. Luck plays a big part in cycling.
“I’ve been lucky with injuries and I went into the sport knowing it’s not all like what you watch on TV.
“You watch the Tour de France when they’re riding into Paris and there’s fireworks going off and you’re thinking: ‘I’d love to do that, it would make me great money riding around France…’ But there’s nobody there when you’re riding out in the rain.”
Veteran GAA manager John Brennan said recently that “winning a championship is a personal thing” and that’s true, but at least Gaelic Footballers have a squad of team-mates around them.
Compared to that, cycling is a solitary existence that requires absolute dedication and it’s particularly hard for Irish cyclists who have to travel to train because there is no velodrome in this country.
“You have to blank out the pain-factor and everything that’s running through your head,” says Mark.
“Every minute of every training session you have to remember why you’re pushing yourself so hard for that end goal.
“You can’t think: ‘my legs are sore, my arms are sore…’ I’m a big believer in just ‘put your head down and get on with it’. There’s nobody going to do it for you – if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”
Six days a week, three sessions a day, it’s him and his bike against the road under the watchful eye of coach David Muntaner.
Mark had done four hours’ on the bike the day we spoke and he pushed himself hard when the Cycling Ireland squad gathered in Palma, Spain for their pre World Championships training camp.
“It went well, I just want to get racing now,” he said.
When the gun goes on Friday he’ll be ready.
The events explained
Points race
A mass-start race of 40km (160 laps) for men and 25km (100 laps) for women. Points are scored in intermediate sprints, which are held every 10 laps, with five points for the winner followed by three, two and one for the next three over the line. There are also 20 points on offer for lapping the field.
The winner is the rider with the most points at the end of the race.
Madison
The madison - named after Madison Square Garden in New York - is similar to the points race but with teams of two riders.
Men race 50km (200 laps) while women race over 30km (120 laps), while the Intermediate sprints are held every 10 laps, with five points for the winner followed by three, two and one for the next three over the line - while these points are doubled for the final sprint at the end of the race. Teams can also earn 20 points by gaining a lap on the main bunch.
One rider is always active, while the other continues to ride round, but is effectively 'resting' at the top of the track. When the active rider needs a breather, around every lap and a half or so, they 'hand-sling' their partner into the action. The best madison duos have an endurance rider capable of gaining a lap and a sprinter to win points.
The team with the most points at the end of the race is the winner and if there is a draw on points, places in the final sprint determine the winner.
