Honestly, if you’re reading this you probably just stumbled across it. Martyn Irvine, who is he? He is me and I am a cyclist.
I do what everybody does or has done at some stage in their life. In my eyes, cycling is a popular minority considering the amount of bikes about these days. It has increased 10 fold in the last five years, which is really cool to see.
I represent Ireland on the track – track being an indoor velodrome – and I also race on the road. Last year I road-raced for United Healthcare Pro Cycling Team and was based in the USA. Next year I will ride for Madison Genesis in the UK. I lived in Colorado last year and returned to Europe in September to kick off my Rio 2016 track campaign.
For those of you who are not familiar with it, track cycling is a very unique sport. You are cycling at 50-60kph on a timber track with 45 degree banking and have no brakes. 45 degrees may not seem steep until you either look down or fall off.
My Olympic event is called the Omnium and consists of six events split across two days. At this point I’ll leave you off as the Omnium is hard to explain in a handful of words – even I Googled it at some point!
I have won European, Commonwealth Games, and World Championship medals on the track with my biggest win being the World Championships in 2013. It was the first time in 116 years since an Irish cyclist had achieved such a feat so it was a big deal for the sport in this country… and me.
I represented Ireland at the Olympic Games in London, which was awesome. I very much started out as the underdog being from a country without much resources compared to other cycling programmes, however, I still managed to fly the flag for Ireland at the Olympics.
I’m relatively unknown in Ireland but I guess that’s the problem with competing in a sport that not considered mainstream. I hope to change this in Rio 2016 and, with SportJOE’s help, spark some interest in the sport that I love.
Since I began my 2016 Olympic qualification process, I have crashed in each of the two rounds. But no, I don’t need stabilisers, I just need people to stop lying down in front of me at 50kph.
As I type this, I am three weeks post collar bone surgery but I’m back training which is positive. I’m on the back-foot in my qualification process due to the break but I’m nothing if not persistent.
Check out my Facebook page, or follow me @martyn_irvine on Twitter to see what I’m getting up to. Thanks for reading.
