Damien Shaw on his way to victory in the Cycleways Cup in Navan last Sunday. The Mullingar strongman will miss some domestic road races at least for the next few weeks as he rejoins the highly successful paracycling national team as a tandem pilot (Photo: Sean Rowe)
Damien Shaw is back in the Irish Paralympic track fold as a tandem pilot for visually impaired rider Peter Ryan from Upperchurch Drombane CC in Co Tipperary.
The Team ASEA man commences a training camp with the national set-up at its base in Majorca today, Thursday.
He will remain committed to the programme until the end of the month, at least.
“I’m just going to commit to it for the next few weeks and we’ll see after that,” he said,
“The track programme will go until the end of March and we’ll be going until then anyway.”
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Damien Shaw and James Brown; a partnership that took time trial bronze on the road at the London Paralympics.
That means he will not be in Limerick this weekend for the opening race of the National Road Series while he will also miss the St Patrick’s Day weekend of racing.
He will, however, be back in Ireland for one of his and his team’s big goals for the season, the Des Hanlon Memorial two weeks on Sunday.
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Shaw was recently drafted back into the squad by Paracycling coach, Neill Delahaye.
His recruitment follows his show of strength in winning the Cycleways Cup in Navan last Sunday for the second year in-a-row.
However, his recall to the squad had been decided before that win.
Shaw looks to be in mint condition and will be a great asset to the paracycling set-up (Photo: Sean Rowe)
The Mullingar man previously spent a number of years with the Paracycling squad and in 2012 took a silver medal with James Brown at the World Championships in Los Angeles.
He also took bronze at the London Paralympics alongside Brown, in the men’s road time trial B.
The goal of the latest training camp is to prepare the riders for the UCI Paracycling Track World Championships in the Netherlands at the end of the month.
Beyond the World Championships Shaw was not sure what his commitment to the programme would be.
But with next year being an Olympic year and qualifying riders Rio de Janeiro a huge goal for Cycling Ireland, he could be tempted by the prospect of another Games.
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