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Martyn Irvine, pictured at an Electric Ireland promotional event last month. Brendan Moran / Sportsfile
Interview

2012 Olympics: Irvine ready to be Ireland's accidental hero

Martyn Irvine on his transformation from couch potato to Olympic cyclist, getting up to no good, and staying out of trouble between now and London.

MARTYN IRVINE’S PLANS between now and the opening of London 2012 are really quite simple: “Stay out of trouble and keep fit. In that order.”

If ever there was an unlikely Olympian, the 26-year-old from Newtownards, County Down feels it is him. At the World Track Cycling Championships in Melbourne last month, he booked his place at the start line when the Omnium becomes an Olympic discipline for the first time later this summer.

But two years ago, Irvine had never even tried his hand on a cycling track, concentrating on road races instead; and he was 17 before he swung his leg over a racing bike for the first time.

His has been a quite remarkable rise. He bats away most questions with a keen self-deprecation, careful not to seem too proud or cocky, and is reluctant to even describe himself as a professional cyclist when people ask him what he does for a living.

“I think maybe a small bit is because of where I’m from in the North. It’s a bit like, ‘Cycling, what the hell is that? That’s something you do to get around.’

Maybe that’s a small part of it, it’s just ingrained in me that kind of feeling. But now with the whole Olympic buzz, I’m happy to say I’m a cyclist. It’s sinking in a bit. It’s a pretty rare and exclusive club to be an Irish Olympian so that’s hit me a bit.

Rise

Before he took up a bike for the first time Irvine was, by his own admission, “a bum.”

“Not a bum but a couch potato.” He corrects himself with a smile. “Just dossing through life, tinkering with cars. I was straight out of school at 16 and working in a garage. I just autopiloted through school and I liked cars so I worked around cars. The guys in that garage were mad into cycling.

“Maybe I was running around, getting up to no good, keeping half-fit. The bones were there, the muscle and the engine were there somewhere and I just opened it up if you like. I was lucky to fall into the right kind of channels to take it on from there.”

From there, Irvine was bitten by the bug. He did his first Open race when he was 19 — physically “the biggest kicking of my life” — and before long found himself training with the Sean Kelly team.

The transition to the track came later, as recently as two years ago. The Omnium, his speciality, is a six-event competition made up of races, time trials and pursuits.

Ahead of its Olympic debut in London this summer there have been a few changes to the rules, ostensibly for the better; one of them nearly damaged Irvine’s qualification campaign beyond repair. At the Astana World Cup in Kazakhstan last November, he didn’t complete an exit lap quickly enough and was disqualified.

That dropped him down to ninth in the overall standings, one place outside the qualification cut-off. It was “a big dent”, the low point of his entire campaign.

The hour or two after it, I was thinking what have I done here. Money’s tight and getting out to Astana wasn’t cheap, but then the next morning, you have to start again. I think it’s just a greater focus on the big picture.

“I didn’t panic though. I don’t know if I’ve gotten numb to the stress or something, but I just thought that I could turn it around in the next race. I think I was fifth in the next one and it shot me back up from ninth, outside the qualifying, to fifth inside the qualifying.”

Relief

With only eight places up for grabs at the end of a gruelling two-year campaign, Irvine travelled to Melbourne for last month’s Track World Championships with his fate uncertain but still very much in his own hands.

Relief, rather than elation, was the dominant emotion after a seventh-place finish saw him through to London.

Shit happens, but I think mentally in my own head, I knew this was where I wanted to go. It was doable and it happened.

When I came home, my fiancee met me at the airport with a bunch of friends and I was like, ‘Woah, what’s this all about?’ It never really hit me.

Everybody keeps asking ‘Are you not jumping for joy?’ Relief and satisfaction are probably the main things. It’s not over yet.

Now that he’s there, there’s little sense in reining in his ambition or trying to put the brakes on his rapid rise from the couch to track cycling’s pinnacle.

“Podium is in my head, that’s where I see myself standing. Four-tenths of a second separates 10 guys in the Omnium. You obviously need a twist of luck but I know that if it all goes my way, I’ve all the tools to do it.”

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