Conor Hennebry's story of rapidly progressing from cycling to GAA training on his father's bike to securing a place in the professional peloton is quite incredible.
By Brian Canty
He’ll pull on the An Post-ChainReaction team jersey and pin numbers to his back in a few weeks from now and wonder is it all a dream.
Conor Hennebry is walking on air and he has every right to be; he’s the ex-GAA player who used his father’s bike to ride to hurling training with the Clonea Power club.
That Trek 1.2 with Shimano Sora groupset bike was bought on the bike-to-work scheme but rarely used for its ‘intended’ purpose.
The man who got most use out of it still uses it, albeit as a winter training bike.
That man rode his first race in March 2013 and first featured on our radar when he finished seventh in the A4 race on St Patrick’s Day in Carrick-on-Suir.
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It’s been one heck of a journey for Hennebry and sitting in the lobby of the salubrious Diamante Beach Hotel in Calpe on a gun-metal grey January afternoon he struggles for words.
Zipping past outside are Bernard Eisel and Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) as their teammate Edvald Boasson Hagen bumbles about too.
The Katusha team is also here, as is Movistar. But making the most noise – at least at the dinner table - are the Irish crew.
Above, with Sean Kelly at the Calpe training camp and with team mates Sean McKenna and Damien Shaw tucking into their grub.
“It’s a bit of a shock, to be honest,” is Hennebry’s assessment of his situation and surroundings.
“I targeted the team last year. I wanted to progress as much as possible and this is obviously another step in the right direction.”
He’s been a man on an upward curve ever since he first threw his leg over a bike.
“I had to work my way up and I got a bit of a kicking. I was seventh in my second race in Carrick and I wasn’t too focussed.
“I was in college, I was just doing a bit (of training) whenever I got a chance but did a few more races and I got up to A3.
“I was third in the A3 nationals in Omagh so that brought me up to A2.”
As an A2 he “won nothing” but as he was in third year construction management in college he went on work experience and only raced from February to April.
“I only got about six races in but enough points to get me to A1. I raced the nationals in Mullingar in 2015.
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“I got a kicking there but I just wanted to ride it. And I was A1 with Carrick Wheelers starting 2015.”
That was exactly two years ago but what’s happened since has been extraordinary.
Taking one of several wins in Belgium last season and on international duty last year; he's come a long way fast.
He’s not from cycling stock. His people are GAA; Waterford diehards. And he was too before cycling lured him in.
“It did for a long time; playing from the time I was about 10,” he recalled.
“I used to think I was putting in a lot of effort going training but guys were going on the beer and still getting picked before me.
“I played a little underage hurling for Waterford (U14 and U16), won the Tony Forristal (U14 Munster Championships) back in the day.”
But his love affair there soon ended.
“My father got a bike on the bike-to-work scheme and I ended up taking it,” says Hennebry of what proved to be pivotal moment in his life.
“For the bones of a year I was just doing a small bit; cycling to hurling and football training until cycling took over.
“Kelly would have always been the hero since I was young,” he continued of ‘the great one’.
“We’ve pictures of him in our house from when he was racing. I first got to know him 5 to 6 years ago when I started cycling with the Carrick group and he was there.
“He knew who I was new because my brother was cycling before me.
“When I started I got an absolute beating. I thought I could do three hours easily but I managed an hour and went home I got such a beating.”
But the bike culture is strong in Carrick-on-Suir and once he got the bug the right people were around to guide him.
“I looked up to Martin O’Loughlin, Rory Wyley and Hugh Mulhearne because they’ve all been through the mill and know how to ride their bikes.”
It’s been a step by step approach for him all the way but now he faces the biggest step of all; the move from amateur racing to getting in with the pros.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever done. It will be a learning experience for the first couple of races,” he says.
“But I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and doing my best and if I keep improving hopefully I can move forward.”
As regards what he hopes to do this year he said: “Ideally I’d be on the Rás team, not just because I’m Irish.
“I want to perform and show I’m good enough and that’s one of the big targets for the year.
“It’s been a dream come true. I targeted it at the end of last year to move forward and to have it come through is a big relief.”
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