Former track world champion Martyn Irvine won the penultimate stage of the Rás in 2011, above, and having returned to work on the race this year it has stirred strong feelings in him, as he told Shane Stokes.
Having returned to the race where he won a fantastic stage back in 2011, Irish cycling legend Martyn Irvine has said the past week on the Rás has rekindled his love for cycling.
The Olympian, former World Champion, three time Worlds medal winner and UCI World Cup winner has told stickybottle he has the road racing bug again and may even return to the international track fold if the conditions were right.
The 31-year-old called time on his career earlier this year and went back to the Rás last week to drive journalists around the race.
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He described seeing the event from behind the scenes as “an eye opener”.
“When you’re a bike rider you’ve no clue,” he said. “Bike riding is probably the easiest part of the whole Rás for time; a couple of hours work and then you put your feet up!”
However, from a spectator’s point of view it was hard to grasp how fast and dangerous the race was and looking on was “more muted”.
Irvine bridged a gap of over a century to become an Irish world champion on the track in 2013.
But the positive experience of being around the national tour had made him rethink whether he had a future in the sport after all.
“Honestly, with the track and road and juggling everything I just lost maybe the reason why I was doing it and I started hating it,” he said.
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“This week has shown me that actually it’s really good, bike racing is fun.
“I would like to be back in it. It definitely has given me a kinda buzz; maybe not so much come track racing but to come back road racing and enjoy it again.”
Irvine added he would “like to do it more than amateur, but I don’t know what level”.
He believed he was “stuck in a rut” track racing in recent years and getting “battered” as a result and perhaps lost his love for road racing through chasing results on the track.
“It’s not undoable, to come back at 31 and have a few more years in me if that chance came around,” he said.
“But this week has opened by eyes... it’s still that bunch of people I’ve appreciated, there’s such a comradey around Irish racing, it’s good to be involved in it.
"I’m looking forward to getting out training again. We’ll see if in a month’s time I hate it again!”
Though road racing was perhaps uppermost in his mind when considering a return, he said he could be enticed back to the track.
Having won a world title in the scratch race and taken a silver in the pursuit on the same day in 2013 followed by a scratch race silver at the Worlds 12 months later, Irvine said he became involved in the omnium against his wishes.
He felt he was a strong rider rather than a fast rider and if he could ride disciplines that suited him better he may return to the track.
“If endurance events came back I would gladly focus for that, honestly I would,” he said.
“Pursuit or scratch; if they came back at Olympic level I’d be first to put my hand up to focus for it.”
Martyn Irvine speaks to Shane Stokes
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