Family, friends and followers are something Richie Byrne has in plentiful supply. And though he's battling cancer of the brain he looks a million dollars here as he takes to the trails near his home in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
By Brian Canty
One of really big-hearted members of the Irish cycling community, Richie Byrne has talked about his ongoing battle with cancer after being struck down with the disease some months ago.
Dubliner Byrne (53) was diagnosed with cancer of the brain and of his hip but has maintained the larger-than-life persona he’s renowned and is determined to fight the hand he has been dealt.
Despite his age – which he insists is only a number - Byrne still competes regularly and within days of having a 4cm tumour removed from his brain he was back out on the trails working up a sweat.
Advertisement
“It’s not every day you get told you have a brain tumour,” he recalled of the day his world came crashing down.
“I knew something was wrong all year because I was having horrific crashes in races.
“I was racing the (Enduro World Series) and I was having stupid crashes - crashes and mistakes I’d never make.
“I was going straight off the track, I wasn’t making corners and I thought I was just tired because I was busy with the shop," he says in reference to the Giant Bike Store in Dublin he manages.
“I put it down to exhaustion though the lads put it down to old age,” he said jokingly.
Byrne has been racing for almost 30 years but the crashes mounted up and what was worse, he even had to slow down.
“I was backing off and I’d never back off,” he laughed. “The boys were mocking me saying you’re just getting old Byrne!
“Then I was getting confused; I was forgetting trails and having moments saying ‘what the f*** I am I doing here’.”
The gravity racing is not for the feint-hearted and decisions need to be made quickly. A moment’s hesitation can spell disaster.
“The boys are really motoring in this; less than a second is enough to throw you off and I really upped my game this year because I was in the over 40s category.
“There’s no over 50s and some of them boys (in O40) are quick, really quick.
“I would’ve been very competitive in that category but this year I was thinking, ‘what am I doing?’.
"We were all assuming it was old age and tiredness and I picked up a couple of injuries from crashes I shouldn’t have had.”
If that was bad, it was when he couldn’t use his fork to collect food on a plate to feed himself that the alarm bells went off.
“I came home and I couldn’t eat my dinner; I just couldn’t use the fork to pick up my food and my wife said, ‘Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you’.
“I had a sort of a breakdown so the next day we went to St Vincent’s and they did tests on me.
"They sent me home but called me back in the next day and said ‘we think you have a brain tumour’ and I was like ‘ye wha?’”
His worst fears were confirmed when the medical staff informed him he had cancerous cells in his brain and his leg.
Initially, they thought radiation would cure him but a scan of his brain revealed a very large tumour.
They sent him home on a Wednesday after that scan but called him back immediately when the results showed the size of the tumour. The blade was required.
“I was just thinking ‘what the hell’," he said of what sounds like a frightening period. “If I didn’t take it out I was gonna die, simple as that.”
Related News
Byrne, left, has always raced and does a lot of training; his physical condition assisting greatly in his fight against cancer and recover from recent surgery (Photo: Sean Rowe)
In a true testament to Byrne’s resilience he made light of the surgery.
“They brought me down to theatre and took 4cm of cancer out of my brain,” said Byrne in the most nonchalant manner you could imagine.
“About 20 minutes after the operation I was back in the ward eating toast and drinking tea.
“They were more than impressed so twi days later I was on the way home because I’d made such a fantastic recovery.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s all over, of course.
“I’ve radiation starting next Tuesday to remove the remaining scraps of cancer and I’ve a lump on my groin to be removed but there’s not a lot of it.
“They’re very happy and basically I just have to recover now, so in the meantime I am cycling a bit.”
Byrne has been given a great chance of beating this cancer, but the man himself says he has the bike to thank for that.
“Cycling saved my life because I’m so fit at 53 years of age I’ve the strength to take all this in my stride.
"And I’m one of the very few people who has no associated illnesses with the cancer. I had cancer in my brain and my hip but that’s it.
“My blood pressure and cholesterol are like a man of 25 and the fact I cycle the bike every day, sometimes twice as a day, has stood to me; that’s what the doctor told me.
“I’m back on the bike, I don’t do a lot, but I’m back on the bike.
“The funny thing is, from the waist up I feel deadly but my legs are like chicken legs and I get an hour out of them before I have to sit down!”
While he retains his irreverant approach to life, he says he knows his health situation is a serious one.
“Every day I go out and go a bit further but I have changed my diet dramatically to mostly fish and boiled potatoes, I don’t eat any fats, I’ve cut out all sugar.
“The doctors are all talking about me, the fact of the matter is the exercise I’ve been doing for 30 years is what’s keeping me going and kept the cancer at bay.
“My attitude is like this because it has to be… it’s the way I am.
“I can be an almighty bollocks and I’d be sitting here sometimes and the first thing I’d think about when I wake up in the morning would be my mortality.
"But I’m working really hard at this. I want to encourage other people to be the same.
“I met a lot of people since this started that when they were told I had cancer they just went ‘oh Byrne, dead. That’s it'.
“It happened to me own father, he died about 13 years ago from cancer. He was told he had it and he just gave up.
"My mother told me once he was told he just gave up, he didn’t fight it. He may not have been able to, but a lot of people you meet, most of them say ‘that’s me fucked’.
“That is not how it is. I’m a very positive person, you know what I mean?
“I’m like this all my life, so this is nothing new to me. When they told me I had it I said, ‘right, well what do I have to do to get rid of it?’.
“Having said that, there were people in worse situations than me. The health service is a disaster but the people working in it were brilliant.
“I had brilliant doctors; the best in the world. The doctor who operated on me had his family killed in a hate attack in Leicester last year.
“He’s an amazing man and I owe my life to him. Where he works there are 15 theatres and they’re going 14-20 hours a day, every day. Think about that.”
Topics
