Shaw in yellow at the Donegal Three-Day
Last season's National Criterium Championship silver medalist, Damien Shaw will next week join the An Post-Sean Kelly team at its training camp in Spain and if he achieves a number of targets in the coming season he may join the team for a stagiaire in August.
The 27-year-old landscape gardener only bought a bike two years ago with a view to losing weight, but having started racing as an A4 he quickly graduated to the first category ranks and performed well in senior championships during the 2011 season.
Shaw told stickybottle while most riders began progressing into professional and even full-time riding at a much younger age, he is still seeing significant improvements the more he trains and says Sean Kelly has told him his age is not an obstacle.
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"I met Kelly in November and to be fair to him we spoke about the age thing and he rattled off a number of examples to me of riders that had made the jump at a slightly older age."
"I spoke to Mark Scanlon as well, he was also extremely helpful and he was the same as Kelly in telling me that going over (to Europe) that bit older was not impossible."
"The numbers I am getting in testing are still improving and I'm being told that they all point towards very good elite or pro level. I have had that since I started cycling and they keep improving."
Shaw is currently a funded athlete on the paralympic programme because he pilots a tandem for a visually impaired rider.
He is currently in the middle of a ten-day training camp with the paralympian set-up in Palma. When that is finished he will travel to Alicante to join the last days of the An Post-Sean Kelly team's training camp.
"It's about going over and training with them to see where I am at in relation to them. I wouldn't be getting carried away with it for now. You have to go and at least see where your level is against their's in training first, and then take it from there. But if I found I was a good bit off them I think that would just make me try that bit harder and really go for it in the next few months."
Shaw has never ridden the Ras and said Kelly feels that if he put in a good performance in that race the possibility of a stagiaire, usually starting in late summer, is something that would be seriously examined.
"It's about going to the Ras, seeing if I can mix it with these guys and get up in stages."
He also feels he must perform well in other stage races in Ireland such as the Tour of Ulster, Ras Mumhan and Suir Valley Three-Day. He believes getting on the podium in the national time trial championships is not beyond him.
"I didn't specifically prepare for the individual time trial last season because I was supposed to be doing it on the tandem. But I wasn't a whole heap of time off the podium so I think there could be an opportunity there."
(Shaw was sixth in the TT on a time of 51:43, which was 1:13 off Michael Hutchinson's third place.)
While a latecomer to cycling, Shaw is not without a pedigree in sport. He did an applied languages degree in Dublin City University and was good enough at cross country and middle distance running to secure a scholarship. He stopped running aged 21 years when he left college and began working.
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He said testing he underwent as a teenager identified strengths suited to a career in cycling, though he went on to persist with his running.
It was not until the spring of 2010 that Shaw, having gained some weight, bought a bike on the cycle to work scheme and began training for a charity cycle. He then took out an A4 licene.
His first good ride came in his home race, the Mullingar Two-Day, in July 2010 where he won the opening stage and finished second in the TT before seeing his GC chances disappear with a broken chain on the last stage.
The following month he won the GC in the Ballinrobe Two-Day, also taking the sprint and climbers classificaion.
When he entered his slack period in work in winter 2010 he decided to use his free time to increase his training.
He underwent testing with Cycling Ireland in early 2011 with a view to gaining a place as a paralympic pilot. He secured that place and is a funded athlete as a result. He went to the World Track Championships in Italy last year where he took ninth in the pursuit with his tandem partner Andy Fitzgerald. The duo also broke the national 4km pursuit record in March.
Shaw, who rides for Lakeside Wheelers, began the domestic season in 2011 as an A3 but quickly moved up the ranks with a string of good results. He won the GC in both the Kanturk Two-Day and Donegal Three-Day and was second in the National Criterium Championships.
He was fourth on GC in the Suir Valley Three-Day, where he finished second on two stages. He was later third in the National Hill Climb Championships.
"For a lot of races I would have been maybe in the middle of a block of training for the paralympic programme but just raced them anyway. I feel with a bit of taper there is definitely room to improve."
While hoping to get a trial with the An Post-Sean Kelly team, he says qualifying for the Paralympics first is a key goal for the summer months, after which he will hopefully go to Europe and possibly the UK and give road racing his full attention.
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