Donal Harrington came back from being an overweight truck driver to finish the Rás in 2012 despite an awful crash. And now he is taking on a very different challenge (Photo: Sportsfile)
It's hard to believe it's 14 years ago, but back then the face of Rás Tailteann was Donal Harrington. He was a previously overweight truck driver who had whipped himself into shape to take on Ireland's hardest bike race.
Despite his massive transformation, it was nearly over for him just after it had begun; 40km into stage 1 to be precise.
In the days when it was a UCI-ranked race, Harrington, riding for Mayo Centra, crashed heavily on that opening stage. His face was covered in blood.
But he got back up on the bike and by the time he finished in Kilkenny the blood had spread all over him. It made for some dramatic photographs on the day.
Harrington was in a group that finished just 50 seconds inside the time limit.
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“Skerries is all I’m worried about," he told stickybottle at the time, razor-focused on making it to the finish and completing the race. "At my age (37) it’s all about Skerries.
"I’ll tell you, we put in so much work into this since last October that if my Rás was ended after 40km I’d never be able to get over it. Never. Back at the start of the year it was all about the Rás.
"We were talking; ‘will I make it, will I make it’… but you couldn’t accept not finishing. If the doctor pulls me out, the doctor pulls out. But you go on otherwise.”
And now, having pushed through that day and gone on to finish the race in Skerries a week later, Harrington has pushed through another big challenge, maybe his biggest yet.
At the age of 50, he's left his life as a trucker behind and he has joined the Garda.
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The age limit for joining Ireland's police force was raised from 35 to 50 last year. And so he decided to go for it. He says he's loving his Garda training so far.
"At 50, it's a big choice," he said. "Some people were very supportive, and some people thought I was crazy."
He added his boss when he drove a truck rang him recently and told him he was delighted he'd taken the big step into the Garda Templemore College in Tipperary.
Harrington explained when he was a much younger man, in his 20s, he had wanted to join the Garda. But he decided to go traveling instead. And when he came back to Ireland and applied, he was not accepted.
Still, he continued to nurse that ambition of being a guard one day. But when he felt the time was right again, when in his early 30s, the Celtic Tiger crash happened and Garda recruitment was paused.
And by the time it started again, he was over 35 and so he'd missed the boat, only to get a second change when the recruitment rules were changed to include people up to the age of 50.
He said the hardest aspect of his current Garda training was getting to grips with technology, something he said he had absolutely no experience of in the past.
However, while he'd never sent an email with an attachment before joining the force, his fellow trainees - mostly in their mid-20s - had been of great assistance. And he said the energy of the younger recruits “has taken years off me”.
We wish Garda Donal ‘Man of the Rás’ Harrington the best of luck in his new career!
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