Mick Cusack raced against Stephen Roche, McQuaids and others, now back to international competition
By Shane Stokes
Decades after he missed out on his goal of competing in the Olympic Games, former Irish international Mick Cusack is set to don the green jersey on the big stage when he competes in the Gran Fondo world championships on Sunday.
The 66 year old rider returned to competitive cycling several seasons ago after many years away, joining the Westport Covey Wheelers approximately four years ago after he returned from living in America to relocate to the west of Ireland.
“With the Coveys, I was able to start doing a few club races. And then I decided to have a go at the qualification for the Gran Fondo World Championships in April of this year,” Cusack told Stickybottle recently. “And so I went over to Vienna. There were 1100 people in the race, and I ended up fifth in my age category, which gave me the qualification for the worlds.
Advertisement
“I’ve been training ever since for that, because I figure, at almost 67 years old now, that I won’t have many more chances to ride at that level. It’s such a privilege to get that opportunity to race against the best riders.”
Asked if he was surprised by how well the qualifiers went, he said it was a voyage of self-discovery.
“I think I had prepared fairly well, but I wasn’t sure what to expect, to be quite honest. I had no idea. It’s been so long since I rode in an event with that number of riders or from other countries, I just didn’t know what to expect.
“So I was pleased to finish in the top five and qualify. It made it all worthwhile and really focused me on what was coming up.”
‘ROCHE’S CLASS WAS PHENOMENAL, TO BE HONEST’
Cusack grew up in London, moved to Dublin in 1964 and joined the Dublin Wheelers in 1972. He initially did some touring, and enjoyed that so much that he turned his attention to competing. He didn’t have to wait long to earn his first green jersey.
“A year after starting racing I got my first chance to ride for Ireland as a junior in the Isle of Man,” he explained. “Then I was put on the Irish Olympic squad for Montreal, when I was only 17, which was a bit early.”
The circumstances of that squad place were unusual, to say the least. At the time there was a ban on Irish sportspeople competing in South Africa due to the apartheid regime there. Two of Ireland’s big names raced there under fake names; they were found out, and missed out. They wouldn’t be going to the Olympics.
“I was far too young,” he said, speaking about his naming to the Olympic squad. “It was very controversial because I was put on and Peter Morton was put on in a six man squad. And Pat McQuaid and Sean Kelly were left off, because of the South African debacle. But still people felt like, what are these two juniors being put on the Irish Olympic squad? It’s ridiculous. In my mind, I knew that was not going to pan out, in terms of Montreal.”
“It wasn’t until 1978 that I rode international stage races for Ireland. One was called the Tour of Europe. And I also was sent to the Tour of the Cotswolds and got placed in that. That was an English Star trophy race at the time. And of course I rode the Tour of Ireland.”
Cusack moved to the Tailteann a couple of years after he started racing and picked up some solid results. He won the prestigious Red Island GP in Skerries in 1976, attacking on his own and holding off the bunch. Alan McCormack (Eagle CRC) took second ahead of Tony Lally (Obelisk). He also won the two day Tour of Longford and, internationally, considers his best result to be finishing ninth in the Tour of the Cotswolds.
He was also third on the final stage of the 1978 Tour of Ireland, rubbing shoulders with some of the top Irish riders at the time, including a future Tour de France winner.
“I was riding on the Irish team with Stephen Roche. We were roommates for the entire Tour,” he says. “So I got a good idea of just how good Stephen was. On the last stage, I got away with Peter Morton, Bernie McCormack and Oliver McQuaid. And we stayed clear. Ollie won the stage and I finished third. Peter was second.”
Asked what impression he had of Roche at that age, Cusack says his class was obvious.
“It was phenomenal, to be honest. He would have been about 18 at the time, I think. He finished third overall. Every morning when we would get ready to go down to breakfast, it was as if he had never ridden the day before. He was completely recovered.
“I was walking down the stairs backwards from the pain in my quads. But Stephen was like…he’d clap his hands and he’d say, ‘today’s the day Mick, we’re going to take those British Airways boys out.’ And he had no doubt, no doubt as to his ability. And he was right. It was eye-opening, to be honest, sharing a room with him for eight days.”
‘THEY NEVER GAVE HIM THE WIN THAT HE GOT, BECAUSE HE WAS JUST TOO GOOD’
At the time, Kelly was the only rider racing as a professional. After missing the 1976 Olympics he was approached by famous directeur sportif Jean de Gribaldy and signed up for the Flandria team. With Shay Elliott the biggest name before Kelly, pro riders were few and far between, and reaching the top of the sport seemed well out of reach.
But not for Roche. Cusack said that he had huge self-belief.
“That was there from a young age,” he says. “I knew him since he was 14 and we were quite good friends at the time. And he always had this inbuilt confidence that he was…he wanted to emulate Sean Kelly, he wanted to go to the continent and he wants to show everybody that he was as good as if not better than Sean Kelly.
“He had no doubt in his mind that he could do it. And I think that’s the X factor that Stephen had. It just made him…it was inbuilt into him, for some reason. He knew.”
In Roche’s case the self-confidence wasn’t just down to positive psychology. It wasn’t that he had convinced himself he was good; he had shown it many times over the years. According to Cusack, his dominance was such that he says some organisers tried to airbrush him from the results.
Related News
“As far as I was concerned, in all of the domestic races, Stephen was head and shoulders above the rest of us,” he said. “Even at a young age. An example would have been the Gorey Three Day. When he rode that he was so good at the time that the organizers refused to give him…I think he won all three stages. The organizers just said, ‘well, no, we’re not going to include him.’ We’ll just include the rest. And that’s true. They never gave him the win that he got, because he was just too good. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually true.”
However when asked which others stood out at the time, Cusack suggests that another rider may have had even more class than Roche.
“I was lucky to be close friends Peter Morton. And Peter, I personally believe, had more talent than anybody I’ve ever raced against,” he said. “He was phenomenal. He just had this incredible engine. So he really stood out to me.
“Of course at the time you had the McQuaids racing. Oliver was a super rider. He would have certainly been up there in most of the races. I actually went to the Tour of Europe with Oliver, Tony Lally, John Shortt, Brendan Madden. And we raced this seven day race and in and around the mountains. Obviously, Tony Lally was one who was very difficult to beat if he ever got to the finish. He was a clever rider.
“I wouldn’t have said he had the ability that people like Morton and McQuaid had, but he was very clever.”
LOSING THE BUG AND THEN FINDING IT AGAIN
Cusack was on the provisional squad for two Olympic Games. As previously stated, he was shortlisted in 1976 due to Kelly and McQuaid’s exclusion, but admits he was far too young to be considered.
He was on the squad again four years later but after riding the Shay Elliott in 1979, a race which Peter Morton won in the snow, he left the sport.
He says it wasn’t a case of being jaded with cycling, but rather of shifting priorities. He felt it was time to knuckle down.
“I wouldn’t have said I was disillusioned with it. I just felt that I had focused on cycling for years, and I had not really established any form of living,” he said. “So I needed to change my focal point, because essentially, all I did was ride the bike. But I didn’t feel burned out. I just kind of drifted away, really. I went into studying to become a copywriter in advertising and took it from there.”
Cusack studied, lived in Vienna, then Saudi Arabia, and then the US. He lived in the States for 30 years but, saying that New Jersey was not conducive to cycling, he stopped riding his bike.
That might have been that but approximately seven years ago, children grown up and moved away, he decided to move back to Ireland. He settled in the west of Ireland, where his family is from, and joined the Westport Covey Wheelers club.
“It’s a great club, and they’re very encouraging,” he explained. “I decided to have another go at racing before I got too old. I was able to start doing a few club races. And then I decided to have a go at the qualification for the Gran Fondo World Championships in April of this year.”
Cusack had been training well beforehand, but surprised himself with how he got on. He travelled over to Vienna for the race, lined out against 1100 others and ended up fifth in his age category, securing qualification for the Gran Fondo worlds. He’s put in many hard hours since then, building his form in advance of this Sunday’s championship.
AN UNCONVENTIONAL TRAINING PLAN
Cusack now lives in Dublin clocked up to 350 kilometres a week on local roads. However, conscious that the Gran Fondo worlds in Trento, Italy, will be on very hilly roads, he did a number of things to try to help his chances.
He and several riders from the Les Jeunes club went to the Pyrenees several weeks ago and did a number of Tour de France climbs in training. He went on a separate trip after that to climb Mont Ventoux and, for the first time in his life, started working with a coach.
He also made a leftfield decision to mix things up by doing approximately ten hours a week working for Deliveroo, further building his form in an unusual way.
“I’m finding it really good as a way to augment my training,” he explained. “And riding around the Dublin streets obviously keeps you focused and sharp. I like to try to deliver the orders as quickly as I possibly can.
“From what I understand from Deliveroo, there is a good few people in my age bracket who started to work with them as a way of keeping fit. And also the flexibility of it is terrific, because I can choose my hours. I can go online anytime and say I’m available. And then as soon as I do a delivery, I could say, ‘well, okay, I’m going to get something to eat now’, I go offline, and so on. So it’s, it’s great, the flexibility of it.”
Cusack is also doing his usual consultancy work, and will continue that post-worlds. He previously wrote a book before about racing in the time of Kelly and Roche, and is thinking of working on another, interviewing the likes of Peter Doyle, Peter Crinnion and Sé O’Hanlon.
He’s also got plans to push himself further physically, doing the Westport Sea 2 Summit Adventure race in November and then doing ultra-adventure races around the world. He climbed Mount Kenya and Mount Toubkla earlier this year and got the bug for such adventures.
Before then, though, he’s got Sunday’s world championship race to focus on. He’s worked hard for months to be ready for it and doesn’t quite know what to expect.
“The race itself is actually only 90 kilometres, but 40 of those are uphill,” he said. “It’s a very gruelling course. There’s a major climb, a mountain called Mount Bondone, and it happens after only a few kilometres. It’s 22.5 kilometres long, and the gradients go over 10%. And the sting in the tail in this race is having to climb the mountain a second time before the finish of the race.
“I don’t know what to expect, because some of these riders I know are extremely good. I’ve seen their results.
“I would love to finish in the top five. But that’s a tall order because, again, not having raced for so many years and having just that one international race back in April, I really don’t know what I’m letting myself in for. I think the mountains are perhaps quite a challenge when you can’t train in the mountains. I can’t do that unless I physically go over them, which is what I’ve been doing.
“But yeah, that goal is what I have in mind.”
Whatever the result, though, a circle is complete. Decades after the cycling bug bit Cusack, it came for him again and renewed his enthusiasm for pushing his physical boundaries.
