A former Rás rider and married father of two young children, Jonathan Malone has very sadly lost his fight for life.
A former Rás rider and member of a well known Irish cycling family, Jonathan Malone has very sadly lost his fight for life.
The father of two from Arklow had been fighting a condition known as sarcoma for over three years.
He had been critically ill for some time when last year the specialist treating him was told she would not be having her contract renewed.
The doctor is one of the few with the expertise to treat sarcoma with both radiography and chemotherapy, which Jonathan had been undergoing at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.
A public campaign urging the HSE to retain Dr Alexia Bertuzzi’s services was begun and the Irish cycling community was active in distributing an online petition aimed at pressuring those with the power to keep her on.
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Eventually the campaign was successful and Dr Bertuzzi was retained. But despite that success and the continued treatment Jonathan underwent, he sadly died in recent days.
His family are very closely associated with Newbridge CC and run a number of races each year, including the season-opening Ned Flanagan Memorial.
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It had already been cancelled for this year before the sad news of Jonathan’s passing emerged.
Jonathan’s father John Malone will be very well known to many in the Irish cycling community as one of the key drivers of road racing in Kildare.
Jonathan was a keen cyclist who rode a number of Rásanna and ironically it was a fall from a mountain bike in 2013 that first brought the disease to his attention.
“He fell two and a half years ago and got a bad bruising in his thigh,” explained John to stickybottle last year.
“He went to get it checked out it wasn’t responding to physio so he went for a scan and discovered it wasn’t a haematoma at all.
“In St Luke’s they applied radiotherapy to shrink it and then remove it but six months later all of a sudden it appeared in his lungs.
“That’s when he was passed over to Dr Bertuzzi and she took him into her care and her care has kept him alive.”
Jonathan leaves behind his wife and two young children and we would like to extend our condolences to them, as well as John and all the family and Jonathan’s many friends.
He will be reposing at Sweeney’s Funeral Home, Arklow, from 4pm until 8pm today, Thursday.
Removal will take place on Friday morning at 9.30am to St.’s Mary & Peter’s Church, Arklow, arriving for Mass at 10 o’clock. Funeral afterwards to St Gabriel’s Cemetery.
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