"I try to not get fired, not get divorced, keep the kids happy and still win bike races"

Leading yesterday's breakaway; at 46 years of age winner of the Newbridge Grand Prix Greg Swinand of UCD can still teach his younger colleagues in the domestic peloton a thing or two (Photo: Sean Rowe)

By Gerard Cromwell

After finishing on the podium numerous times already this season, the UCD Cycling Team did it again yesterday in Newbridge, but this time they took up every spot on that podium, with a dominant team performance giving them a clean sweep of the prizes.

With Greg Swinand, Anthony Walsh and Sean McKenna forcing a five man group clear heading out on the third of six laps of an undulating Newbridge course, the students’ union simply rode away from the rest of the field.

They crossed the line for a 1,2,3, with Swinand taking victory ahead of new teammates Walsh and McKenna.

“I kind of needed that,” admitted a delighted Swinand afterwards.

“I haven’t won in ages. Okay, I’ve won time trials and, believe it or not, in the last year and a half I haven’t been out of the top 10 a single time on the road, but I haven’t won an open A1 road race in two and a half years. I’ve been second, third, fourth, you name it ... so it’s nice to win. It's a monkey off my back for sure.”

A long serving member of Usher IRC, veteran Swinand moved to UCD this winter and admits that stickybottle played a big part in his transfer.

“Honestly, I had no intention of switching,” he says.

“There was nothing wrong with the old club. It was my club for ages, but I was getting too comfortable there, getting into a groove."

"But Usher sort of made a decision to go more grassroots a few years back and now they have a lot more grassroots guys but don’t have many category one riders."

"I was reading stickybottle every day and it seemed that every guy and his uncle were joining teams like Aqua Blue or Liquidworx, or some other team. And it was beginning to get me down; that I’d be on my own for another season. But it was still a bit of a trauma to move.”

“A lot of the UCD lads come training south of Dublin and I’m coaching half of them. I know Colm Cassidy from when he rode with Ushers and then I got to be coaching a number of the other lads.

"Obviously, Anthony Walsh does his own coaching but I get on great with Anthony and it seemed like a good move to join up with them.”

UCD have grown in strength over the past year or two and now have the numbers to be a force on the domestic scene as they showed today, the students giving the rest of the peloton a lesson in teamwork in Newbridge.

“I told the lads to be attentive, that we had six or seven guys there, so we had to have guys in every move and they did that,” said Swinand.

“The race was very fast from the start but even in the first break, there were maybe 10 guys there and we had four UCD guys up there.”

“The lap before the winning move went, myself and Anthony got away there without even trying, we sort of fell off the front of the field. When we got around to the next lap, on the little drag, there was a big tailwind.

"I said it to Anthony and we just decided to go and there were five of us; myself, Anthony, Sean McKenna, Shane Baker (Usher IRC) and Michael Fitzgerald (Velo Revolution).”

Despite a chase group containing Saturday’s Rás Naomh Finian winner Javan Nulty and teammate Mark Dowling closing to within 20 seconds, the UCD trio were never to be seen again.

“Once we got a gap, we knew we had three strong guys in the move and we absolutely drilled it," said Swinand.

"Shane was running out of gas and the group was closing on us but we didn’t know if he was bluffing a little so we messed around a bit to figure out if he was faking it or not. But when we drilled it again the gap opened up again.”

With Baker dropped, Fitzgerald knew he was in a no-win situation but continued to give his all to the escape.

“Micheal was doing his fair share and we sort of said that as long as he did his fair share we wouldn’t attack him. But when we got to the last hill, he was pretty gassed and it was just the three of us.”

With three riders from the same club coming to the line at the head of the race, was there a discussion as to who would take the honours at the line?

“The dudes did let me win,” admitted 46-year-old Swinand.

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“I’ve never won in Newbridge. I might have a little bit better sprint than Anto every now and then. But as we were riding in, I was saying... ‘an old guy like me Anto... I might not have another chance to win’.

"But he was like... ‘huh?’ I had to say it three times! Eventually I said ‘I’m trying to say, will you let me win the race? And he said ‘oh, okay!”

“It was brilliant. We know we’re a good team but you’ve got to show it. The Aquablue guys handed it to us the week before. They rode well, rode superb tactically and Damien Shaw is flying.

"Their best guys are head and shoulders above our guys and we will be hard pressed to beat them this year, but I think we have a few more guys than they do, so we’ve got use our numbers."

"Anthony is probably the strongest guy on the UCD team. He’s riding very well. Sean was a little bit tired at the end but he was drilling it on the flats. We seem to have a lot of big strong lads which is what you need for Ireland. We’ve got to use our depth.”

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The current national veteran’s time trial champion, Swinand may be approaching his 47^th birthday this April, but there is no sign of him slowing down just yet, despite a niggling back injury over the winter.

“I was in constant pain and it had been getting worse over the last four or five years,” he says.

“I’d been to maybe eight physios and three osteopaths but I went to (former women’s mountainbike champion) Tarja Owens and she identified some tightness and gave me some reasonable stretches and it seems to have resolved it, which is a big bonus."

But aches and pains are all a part of growing old, Swinand admits.

" You have niggles in your back, your neck and your hands and all that stuff but the thing that killed me was that I had to get reading glasses,” he laughs.

“People say your recovery gets worse as you get older but my recovery hasn’t got any worse, maybe that’s down to the way you train and what your talents are. Guys who are more explosive perhaps get it harder to recover. I’m a very aerobic rider so maybe that doesn’t wane with age, I don’t know.

"But I honestly love training, love riding the bike. I live in Wicklow Town and if you go out and do a long ride on a beautiful day in the summer, up four or five 20 minute climbs, there’s nothing better. Guys from Dublin come down to do the rides we have here."

"The other thing I do, is I commute to work in Fitzwilliam Square, typically twice a week. It’s rough in the bad winter weather but it’s not meant to be easy... trying to keep in business, not get fired, not get divorced, keep the kids happy and still win bike races.”