A new name in the Irish track cycling team, Eimer McMullan goes into this week’s European Track Championships in Holland having come an unconventional route.
The 22-year-old from Castlewarren in Co Kilkenny has no family background in cycling and before the early months of 2017 had never cycled.
She was ploughing away in athletics and only turned to two wheels when Cycling Ireland advertised a talent transfer try-out.
That was effectively inviting women from other sports to apply to be tested by the cycling governing body with a view to assessing any hidden potential for the peloton or the velodrome.
Fast forward 2½ years and McMullan is pulling on the green of Ireland at the Europeans in an elite team that has the potential to win several medals; Shannon McCurley getting the ball rolling last night.
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McMullan also makes her international debut having won two national titles among eight Irish championship medals to date.
What’s more, she has gone from novice newcomer to double Irish champion and elite international while studying medicine.
Her ascent, which has been rapid but under the radar, is as much about time management and self motivation as her natural ability on the bike.
“I was a talent transfer rider 2½ years ago. I had been a sprinter as a runner," she said.
"I did athletics for years and hockey; I did everything really. I picked running then in my last years at school and during my first year in college.
“But with my training group and where it was in college, it was getting more difficult to train and it slowly became training by myself. It just wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped.
“I was competitive to an extent but I don’t think I would have ever made it to the top level. I wouldn’t have been winning medals at the nationals but would have been in finals.
“It would be interesting now to see how I would do at the running if I’d done that the way I’ve been with the cycling. I never approached the running as seriously as cycling now.”
She said her running coach saw the Cycling Ireland talent team concept advertised. And because McMullan was having trouble training as part of a running group due to scheduling and college, her athletics coach suggested cycling may suit her better.
She filled out an online application for the Cycling Ireland talent team but abandoned it halfway through promising to herself she would return to it, which she never got around to.
However, her partial details were enough for her to receive a call inviting her to testing, where a range of efforts from a six-second burst of power to a three minute effort were tested.
“My three minute test was very bad but my six-second test was very good,” recalls McMullan.
“Then they gave me a six-week training programme focused on improving for the next test. And then they did a re-test and the six second got better again but the three-minute wasn’t as good as the other girls.
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“I think they thought at first they could make me an endurance rider. But I always had the sprint physiology so they passed me on to Mark Kiely the sprint coach.”
McMullan has continued to train with Kiely, a very streetwise and powerful sprinter in his day and someone who is now very much a respected international track coach.
She also joined Sundrive Track Team and more recently has raced with fellow sprint international Robyn Stewart under the Billy Bilsland livery.
Success was almost instant. Last season she won gold in the team sprint at the national championships as well as silver in the sprint, keirin and 500m TT.
Another four medals have followed since then in the same events. That makes eight nationals medals – two of them gold to date – from eight starts in Irish championships; an incredible 100 per cent record.
Of late she said she had worked hard to go away and race, with Robyn Stewart very helpful in that regard.
And about one month ago came the call to say she had done enough to book a place on the Irish team for the elite European Championships – a full blown international on a big stage with two national titles and six other medals in her palmares just 2½ years after turning to cycling.
“It was surreal,” she said being picked for the Europeans. “It was incredible, really.
"You put in the work and it’s great to be noticed and that Cycling Ireland are putting their trust in you.
“Even though I don’t have the times that our other sprinter Robyn has, it’s great that they notice you as a development rider. It bodes well; your work is recognised and your potential is recognised.”
McMullan said of her family and friends: “They don’t know what to think, they think I’m mad. I’m not from a cycling background or anything so they don’t really know what to think of it. But they are proud.”
The 22-year-old Kilkenny woman now goes into the sprint, keirin and 500m TT at these Europeams and hopes to approach it as one big learning process.
While she has personal goals to be competitive in the keirin, she has never raced some of the events on an indoor track so is approaching the racing with an open mind.
McMullan is studying medicine in UCD and is in her 5th year in college with one more to complete. To add to her workload, she is also assigned to the Mater Hospital in Dublin at present, shadowing qualified doctors and learning the ropes.
That work keeps her on her feet for up to 11 hours in a shift; 7am to 6pm However, she says she couldn’t imagine doing her medical studies without her cycling, adding she can train alone and do short quality sessions that fit into her schedule.
“That can be in the gym, or I’m on the track when the weather is nice,” she says.
“I focused on the cycling during the summer and had a lot of time but for the last six weeks its certainly different, you have to adapt your training. But sometimes less is more.
“If you’re back home at 7 o’clock and you haven’t sat down all day it may be more conducive to sit down and rest rather than get up on the bike. But you just have to come to terms with that, you have to remind yourself… get the training in when you can and get good training in.”
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