Peter Ryan’s eyesight may only be at 10 per cent but he has a clear vision of what he wants.
The former Tipperary minor hurler is not your typical sportsman. In fact, he’s not your typical anything.
At just 25, he has already experienced going blind as a teenager, crippling levels of denial that led him to an alcohol treatment centre in his early 20s, but now he’s on the cusp of a place at the Paralympic Games in Rio this summer.
His achievements seem so far away from a frightening few weeks around this time seven years ago, when he first noticed his loss of vision during a hurling game.
He admits that, as a 19-year-old, going blind was the last thing that would ever have concerned him.
“I was a county minor in 2008, but really I didn’t appreciate any of it. Things were coming very easy and sure what 18-year-old appreciates anything at that age.
“But at 19 I was playing a few challenge games early in the year, I thought I just needed contact lenses after I made a few mistakes in a game. I was used to wearing glasses for driving, so that’s all I thought was wrong really.”
However, Ryan’s life was to change dramatically as a doctor confirmed a catastrophic diagnosis.
“I went for an eye test the following Saturday and life changed. I had no central vision in one eye and that was a bit of shock to the system.”
Months of testing finally found the root cause of his problem: Leber hereditary optic neuropathy.
It would claim his vision in less than 10 months. By the time he was diagnosed, he was already three months into the process.
It had started in his left eye, but would soon spread to his right. In a matter of weeks, work became more and more difficult as his sight reduced. Peter was one of only 14 people in the country with the condition, and the isolation and lack of support crushed him.
“I just put up my front, it was just such an Irish way of dealing with things and have all these bullshit one-line answers ‘ah, it is what it is’ and ‘you know yourself’. I was trying to live the life I had, and not the life laid out in front of me.
“If I could have got away with driving a car half-blind, I would have done it. That’s how much denial I was in.”
The former hurler’s honesty brings him to remark that while his sight robbed him of a chance of a normal work life or sporting life, his social life was the one thing he clung to.
However, he became so social, it became anti-social to be around him. He would end up watching some of the 2012 Olympic Games in an alcohol treatment centre.
“The pint into my mouth was the only thing that was absolute equal for me to everyone else.
“Rock bottom was when I stopped digging. I dealt with a lot of stuff in the treatment centre and that’s where I came in contact with Fighting Blindness and I met my peers.”
Ryan’s lowest moment would ultimately turn his entire life around, and through the Fighting Blindness Charity, he would develop his own network of visually-impaired friends and colleagues. He began to finally accept his health issues. He also knew that he ended to get back into sport.
Ryan tried out with the Irish Paralympic cycling team at an open day in UCD, and six months later, thanks to a fast-track programme, he won a national title.
His progress has been almost as rapid as his pedalling behind pilot Sean Hahessy on the tandem bike that he will hope can move him a step closer to Rio next week. Ryan feels that his sporting mindset has helped him adjust to life on the bike.
“At the root of it I was a sportsperson who became blind, not a blind man trying out sport. That was the biggest thing that stood to me, I don’t have a hurl and ball in my hand, but winning is winning. ”
Ryan is also the Clare Ambassador for the An Post Cycle Series taking place this summer. Next week he will attempt to cement his place at Rio at the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Apeldoorn. He is confident in his ability, and marvels at how far he has come in just four years.
“It doesn’t matter where I go, I don’t go just to take part. It’s my nature to do well. I’m training six days a week, not to take part.
“I was in the treatment centre during the London 2012 Olympics. I got inspired because I needed to get back a sense of my own life. The thing has snowballed and when I look back on where I came from it’s been so quick it’s hard to believe.”
