College Tribune | September 30th 2008
added a meter or two to the overall distance. But we were still more than happy to break the record!” By the end of the second day, all four Irish cyclists had broken Irish records showing how much the team had advanced since the Athens Paralympics when one solitary cyclist, Denis Twomey, competed purely to see whether the sport was worth investing the time and energy towards. It was, and these results validate this decision. “Some of the records were broken by five or six seconds, that’s big” admits Peelo, “so hopefully we’re not far off from competing for medals, maybe two or three years.” One more track event followed on day four for Peelo and Delaney and one more Irish record would be broken in the 1.5km sprint. Qualifying into the quarter final with this new Irish record, the Irish pair lost narrowly to the South African team. However, the points gained from the positions in these games directly affect qualification for the next Paralympics, thus a sixth place for the Irish was once again exceeding expectations and a boost for their prospects of qualifcation for London 2012. The road beckoned for the pair as they took part in the road race time trials and road race, finishing 18th and 16th respectively. “18th was okay for
not helpful and conducive to winning matches. People say these things cancel themselves out over a season. They do on me arse. That’s a load of rubbish. Every game is different and we haven’t got many penalties this year. But that’s not the reason why we’re at the bottom of the league. There’s so much pressure on our defence. If we don’t score at one end, and then concede a goal, the confidence ebbs from the team. Finn Harps are seven points ahead of us. Being realistic, you’d expect them to win at least one more game. Therefore we’ll have to make up at least ten points. That’s a very tall order, but as long as there’s hope we’ll keep trying and hopefully get that bit of luck. Next week we’ll give it our all, and you never what might happen. Sadly, one of the most r e s p e ct e d
the time trials” states Peelo, “as there was one group consisting of the first six or seven who were ahead of the rest, then there was us. It was good as we were still in with the bulk of the standard. In the road race itself, we fell behind early on and it was difficult to get that ground back on the climbs.” After three memorable weeks, the athletes came home to a throughly deserved heroes welcome in Dublin airport from the hundreds of people who waited for hours for the athletes to arrive, something which blew away Peelo. “You’d normally come back from world championships and maybe have a couple of relatives there welcoming you and that’s it. But when we were walking through the baggage area, you could even hear the noise outside the door from the huge crowd, and at least half of them came from people there for Darragh McDonald (silver medalist in the 400m freestyle swimming) as the school had brought their pupils up. The whole experience probably hasn’t really sank in yet as I’ve become used to shutting things out while competing.” At 42, Peelo reluctantly accepts that this is probably his first and last Paralympic games and is hopeful that for the sake of his sport other cyclists will come through an go even a step further - “Five out of the six riders are at least mid-thirties, so for a sporting point of view we should not still be there for the next paralympics. Hopefully there’ll be good competition in which the cyclists will excel to force the standard. The next big stage will now be transferring the knowledge that we have onto the new riders.” It is fair to say that Peelo is surely the embodiment of the spirit of the Paralympics. Three years ago, his love of cycling was taking him to national championships, the Rás races and to some of the deepest darkest corners of Ireland. In the last three years, his love of cycling has taken him on an unforgettable experience culminating in his involvement in one of the biggest fortnights in sport. And it is thanks to his experience that we can be hopeful for even more success from the cyclists of the Paralympic games in London in four years time.
coaches in the country died on Friday night, Noel O’Reilly. Anything I can say about Noel is positive, but that is inadequate as to do justice to the man, you would have to write a book about him. Even then something worthy of mention would be left out. He was a decent humble man, friendly, and very knowledgeable. It’s no exaggeration to say he must have helped up to 10,000 people, and I was one of the lucky enough to work with him. One thing that actually struck me about Noel was his hand-writing! He was always drawing out match plans, even when I would be talking to him! These days things are done on laptops but Noel was uncanny in the way he did it. Everything was perfection. He was a genius and was always willing to share his knowledge. There’s no church around Dublin big enough to hold Noel’s funeral. The St Pat’s vs Hertha Berlin game on Tuesday in the RDS would be completely full if Noel’s funeral was there, that’s probably the best tribute I can pay him.
Sport
25
SUPeRleAGUe FootBAll’S not CoMinG hoMe
Sodomising the beautiful game The nights lengthen, the leaves fall. It’s a beautiful sight, only to be swiftly ruined by the sudden onset of Superleague. A tourné in which players will compare hangovers as readily as cars and it gives the common man a chance to spend €160 on a pair of boots which will not make him a better player, and will only serve to alienate him from his team mates. There is nothing better than dragging yourself out of bed at half past eight, (yes half eight) to make it out to the wind tunnel that is Belfield campus. The game was scheduled to kick-off at ten (best to get it out of the way early) but when your humble correspondent arrived, he was met by a veritable army of hurley-brandishing fifteen year olds who’s coach, a short country fellow with home-made sambos coming out of his ears (you know the type), barking orders for his team to vacate the area. We still are not entirely sure what he said but they didn’t leave the pitch until nearly quarter to eleven. Just for
the record the hurling team in the bibs won, thanks to some giant heffer in the centre of the pitch which the rest found hard to handle Now to the match. The match which I had elected to watch was a Sunday Division 1 clash between Olympic Real and Ocean’s 11. Lets get the serious stuff out of the way, the score was 12-1 to Real. What is believed to have happened is, and I’m open to correction on this, that the delay in kick-off was to the detriment of the Ocean’s 11 boys who at 10am were in that fluffy purgatory between drunk and hung over. It took Real three minutes to open the scoring, with an incisive through ball picked up by Gareth Bruce on the edge of the box who slotted it away cleanly. Bruce would go onto score three more goals, however this is entirely negated by the fact that he missed a sitter, he promptly blamed it on a divet on the astro pitch. To be quite honest this game was as one sided as Heather Mills after a few Jager-Bombs. Danny Ocean would’ve needed Ocean’s 12 or
13 to make any sort of impact on the game and the only reason they scored is because the Real keeper had forgotten that he was playing and decided to have a bit of a lie down. Despite the score line the Real centre midfield partnership did not seem to work, this is largely due to the fact that Robbie Carty (a 26 year old who wears a school uniform on nights out) did not seem to be at the races. Robbie is, sources say, best suited to playing at centre half, a role which he is only barely capable of playing in so what he was doing in the far more demanding midfield role is perplexing. The game itself was a good spirited encounter with both teams relieved when the referee signalled the end of the game. Real were just getting kind of bored, so bored in fact that they agreed to only try and score with their bad feet. Ocean’s 11 just wanted to go home or back to the pub, a happy place to ease the pain.
Stephen West