Mia Griffin is on the eve of another big juncture in her
career. The rapidly emerging Irish rider is set to throw herself in at the deep
end of the professional cycling world tomorrow when she lines out in Omloop Het
Nieuwsblad.
On the unforgiving cobbles of a likely wet and cold
Belgium she’ll be packed into the same peloton as stars like Annemiek van
Vleuten (Movistar), Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx) Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo),
Marta Bastianelli (Alè BTC Ljubljana Cipollini), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM)
and a whole host of others.
Griffin says she knows it’s going to be hard, savage
even. But she’s looking at the road ahead in a two-year block. Over that period
she is determined to hone her race craft and improve her physical capabilities until
she begins to find her level in the pro peloton.
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“What
I want to do is to just actually ride in the pro peloton; to ride those big
races and just to feel like I gave it my best shot and that I left everything I
had on the road,” she told stickybottle.
Her “best shot” has been pretty good so far; on the track rather than the road. But more on that later.
Now aged 22-years, Griffin had intended to get her
apprenticeship in the pro peloton underway 12 months ago. Riding for the
ILLI-Bikes Cycling Team she traveled to Belgium at the start of last season.
Griffin rode just one kermesse and Omloop van het
Hageland (1.1) before the pandemic stopped racing. She was forced to pack her
bags and end, after just a week, what should have been a quality season of
UCI-ranked European racing.
“It
was my first real road season because I'm not very experienced. So I
really just wanted to go over there and spend a decent chunk of time there and
just race and race; get used to those big bunches.”
While
her racing stint was cut very short, she still got the briefest experience of
the pro scene, which will hopefully stand her in good stead and she re-starts
her European road journey tomorrow.
“Seeing the big pro teams was crazy,” she says of riding briefly in Belgium last year. “Like, seeing the Canyon SRAM girls and so on; it was pretty nuts. These are the girls that you are watching on the television. But I wasn't so stressed about it.”
When
the Belgian trip was brought to an abrupt end she went home to Kilkenny and did
as much racing – club and open road races and TTs – as she could and trained a
lot.
It was a frustrating and unusual year, but one that ended with her winning a medal at the European Track Championships and finding herself in a UCI Continental team for this year, the Belgian-based and Irish-registered Team Rupelcleaning.
How it began
Griffin’s story in the sport began just four years ago when she started cycling from scratch; with no history whatever in the sport.
Back
then, as an 18-year-old, it was all very different for her as she was
captain of the Kilkenny intermediate camogie team and living in the family home
in Glenmore, south Kilkenny. Then one day her mother saw an advertisement on a
notice board in Waterford Institute of Technology, where she worked at the time,
seeking candidates for Cycling Ireland’s talent transfer programme.
Under the talent transfer programme the national
federation wanted to reach out to young women already doing well at one sport
with a view to enticing them towards high performance cycling. The hope was
that some of them might be good on the bike.
Griffin decided she’d give it a whirl and after being
tested for her six-second and three-minute peaks on a Wattbike she was sent off
to train for six weeks.
“My six-second and three-minute efforts were good because
of the camogie, which is also explosive. But I had no endurance” she said. “So I really struggled for the
first few years to build up endurance. And obviously that's what it takes
to be really good on the road.”
When the group of young women was tested again, to see how they had responded to specific cycling training over six weeks, seven showed rates of improvement that caught the eye.
Among the seven are four riders who should be well known
to stickybottle readers as they have featured in race reports in recent years;
Griffin, Orla Walsh, Hillary Hughes and Imogen Cotter.
They were taken under the wing of the Cycling Ireland
high performance staff and were initially taken off to the federation’s base in
Majorca to learn how to ride the track.
Griffin’s cycling career since then has been grounded in
track cycling and she has already marked herself out as one to watch.
In recent years she has been a member of the Irish
national team pursuit line-up that has repeatedly lowered the national record
and at some World Cups progressed through to the second round. She has also
represented Ireland at the European Track Championships and World Track
Championships.
She has also shown real potential on the road; winning a
round of the National Road Series two years ago in Biblical conditions in
Blarney. And last year she was 4th in both the TT and the road race
at the National Road Championships.
Asked
if she was content with her Nationals results, she replied: “Oh, no, I was not
happy with that at all. No, I wasn't. To be perfectly honest, I was
terribly disappointed with that.
“In
the road race, I would have thought I was capable of being on the podium. But
tactically I wasn't very intelligent and I spent a bit too much beans during
the race, trying to break away.
“But that's the way it is and you just have to deal with that and it gave me great fire going into the European Track Championships.”
The Europeans
Last October, just after the road nationals, she was part
of a small Irish team selected for the U23 European Track Championships and took
bronze in the individual pursuit. It was a stunning result for someone who had
never cycled and knew absolutely nothing about the sport just four years ago.
“We
found out we were actually going to the Europeans about five days beforehand.
We weren't sure whether we were going to be going or that the event was
even going to go ahead,” she said of the hastily arranged championships that
were finally put in place, very quickly, in Fiorenzuola d’Arda in Italy.
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“Myself
and Lara (Gillespie) and JB (Murphy) went, it was a small team and it was a
really nice and relaxed atmosphere. The first event that I had was the
individual pursuit and I remember the night before saying that I wanted to set
the tone of the week with a good IP.”
She
said when she did her first ride, in the qualifying round, she tried to empty
the tank and she felt she had given it everything. She finished with the 4th
fastest time and so progressed through to the bronze medal ride-off that
evening against an Italian rider.
“I
knew I always ride better the second time and in the evening time. So
I warmed up and I remember sitting beside the Italian and she just looked a
little bit nervous.
“So I was like, ‘well, I have nothing to lose here, that's great’. And then I rode as hard as I could and that ended up being good enough for the medal.”
Asked
how she felt when she crossed the line and realised she’d just taken a medal at
the Europeans, she said: “I was just kind of shocked. I was really happy
and I just couldn't really believe it to be honest.”
And
then when news broke of her achievement back home, she said so many other
people were delighted for her she was taken aback.
“I
was pretty shocked by the response and just at how so many people were just so
nice after that,” she said.
She credits her former coach Neil Delahaye – part of the Cycling Ireland staff - with having a very big role in her progress and is very thankful to him. She is similarly full of praise for her current Cycling Ireland coach Tommy Evans; the former top international road rider now working again with the national federation having spent a period with Triathlon Ireland.
The year ahead
For this year, Griffin is riding for the Belgian-based and Irish-registered Team Rupelcleaning. It is effectively her Illi Bikes team of last year with new sponsors and having stepped up from elite to UCI Continental level.
She is one of five Irish women on the team for this year,
alongside Alice Sharpe, Lara Gillespie, Kelly Murphy and Gabby Homer.
Apart from the obvious benefits of being part of a team
with four other Irish internationals, the Irish team pursuit line-up is now all
riding for the same trade team on the road. Griffin, Sharpe, Gillespie and
Murphy are the team pursuit foursome that has combined so well on the boards
over the last two seasons and gone much faster than any Irish team pursuit
selection has ever gone.
“The
guy who runs our road team actually works as a mechanic for the Belgian track
Squad,” says Griffin when asked how she will combine road and track this year.
“So
he has a really good idea of the track and we're lucky in that regard. He'll
know when all the World Cups are on, for example. And we’ll be able to dip
in and out of the road for the World Cups that we want to go to, and to do our
road races around that.”
And that, for Griffin, is the key to the year ahead; running a dual road and track programme by racing with the same group of women and having management figures in her road team who understand how to mix track and road.
“I
think with the team pursuit… when you're learning it at the start you need to
be at the track all the time. And you need to be always training,” says
Griffin.
“But
I think me and the (Irish team pursuit) girls can now road race a good bit and then
dip into the team pursuit a week or two before a major competition and smash
out a good time because we’ll have had that hard racing on the road.”
For
her part, she says she wants to have lots of blocks of road racing in
Continental Europe – hopefully for three and four weeks at a time – followed by
blocks dedicated to the track and some short periods at home.
It
is a pattern she thinks will keep her fresh and will see her improve on the road
as a priority, but while keeping the track as a constant goal too.
She
believes that keeping her racing visits in Belgium to defined periods, and
taking the same approach to track training in the Cycling Ireland base in Majorca
will keep her mentally fresh rather than staying in one place for too long and stagnating.
“I
think you get jaded if you got to Majorca for too long,” she says. “It's better
if you just dip in and out for as short a space of time possible. It just
keeps your mind fresh, I think.
“I
also think spending about three weeks in Belgium is okay, but if you spend any
more than that, it gets very intense and you're better off coming home for
periods of time.”
On
the issue of planning to let her development on the road in Europe this year
lead her development as a track rider, Griffin points out it’s the same
approach taken by most of the top international tack riders.
“All
the top track girls are really good at the road as well; they're the best girls
on the track. So I think it’s something that you have to do; you have to
road race to be at the very top in the track.”
She
also says one of the major advantages of her road team taking the step up to
UCI level this year means they will be riding more UCI-ranked races and that
these are much less likely to be cancelled because of Covid-19.
On
the other hand, she says it’s very unclear how the track season will go because
of the pandemic. So for now she would focus on the road and take the track,
specifically the team pursuit, as it comes this year.
At
the same time, she lists out the planned international track meetings in the
months ahead – “there’s Newport in April and then Hong Kong and Cali in
Colombia, smaller C1 races and Six Days” – and she wants to ride them this
year, Covid19 allowing.
Griffin
was speaking to stickybottle not long after she had returned from a three-week
training stint in Majorca where she said she got a very good block of training
completed. She has also been in Belgium over the past week doing recon
rides for her first races of the season, including Omloop Het Nieuwsblad tomorrow.
Asked
what her main goal for the year ahead was, Griffin was very clear.
“For
me it's about progressing as a road rider this year. That's the main priority
because I'm not looking at the Olympics for the track. So I think I have time
for that. It’s about doing year or two being really dedicated to the road,
but sweeping back into the track all the time. I really want to give this a go.”
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