It all started one night on a trip to London when he was
17 years old. Martin Gordon went to bed “a happy and healthy” teenager and woke
up blind. His sight never came back.
The Sligo man has crammed a lot into life in the two
decades since then; the loss of his sight only serving to spur him on rather
than hold him back. Indeed, when he tells you the story of his life, his sight
loss plays a cameo role. It’s a mere footnote.
But his loss of sight is a good place to start this story
because it made him refocus in school and many of the good things in his life
spring from that. He knuckled down into the books when his father impressed
upon him that, having lost his sight, his education would be the key to his
future.
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And that additional effort led to a long and enjoyable time in two universities, in Galway and Dublin, meeting his partner and a successful career in the legal profession.
Once his sight was gone – an unexpected complication
related to glaucoma – Gordon really got the measure of his family and friends.
His parents – Roland and Margaret – showed
“incredible strength”, he says, mentioning repeatedly how their sheer character
caught him when he might have fallen. His friends stuck close to him and had
his back; one even effectively moving into the Gordon family home for a time
such was his support.
That his disability doesn’t define him is underlined by
the next challenge he’s taking on; qualifying for Paralympics. More of that in
a moment, but let’s go back a little first.
Asked how he coped with such a sudden change in his life like losing his sight, particularly when he was 17-years-old, Gordon said: “Whether you're 17 or 77, there's no good time.
“But I was at an age where I hadn't made huge life decisions, in terms of my education or where I lived, those kinds of things. I was fortunate from that perspective. I wasn't halfway through a degree in medicine that was going to be no good to me, for example," he says.
Gordon continues: “I was a very active 17-year-old, of course, swinging golf clubs every weekend or throwing the rugby ball, that kind of thing. So there was always sport. How did I cope with it? I coped with it day by day. It wasn't just a case of ‘this is a bummer’. It was a sink or swim situation. But I was extremely fortunate with the people around me.
“I had a wonderful set of parents. Their strength was
incredible; for what they went through as parents at the time. My friends
didn't abandon me when things went wrong. They rallied around me and some
of my mates rallied around my parents, and their parents rallied around my
parents.”
Because those people were solidly there for him, it
meant he barely missed a beat. He lost his sight in June during the school
holidays but by that September he was back in the classroom, at
Sligo Grammar School, just like everyone else. Two years later he sat the
Leaving Cert, just like everyone else, and got the points for legal studies and
sociology in NUI Galway, followed by a law degree.
“My university experience was the same as everybody else's,” he says. “I got up to the same nonsense and the same fun; same exam pressure as everybody else. And I enjoyed every minute of my four years in Galway, an incredible university.”
From Sligo Town – “the Tuscany of the west” as he
poetically puts in – after college in Galway he headed for the bright lights of
Dublin for a Masters in Trinity College. That was followed by studying to be a
barrister at Kings Inns in the city, which turned out to be life changing from
day one – literally.
“I met Louise when she tripped up over my guide dog,” he
explains of his first day at Kings Inns meeting his now life partner. “She
tripped up over the dog and she came over to apologise and we got talking. A
friendship sparked up that day that has turned into 11 years together, a
house, three guide dogs and our daughter, Nora.”
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He is now an in-house barrister for An Garda Siochana and
has set up home in Dublin with Louise and 5-year-old Nora. But before romance
blossomed and his career took off, cycling came back into Martin Gordon’s life.
He says when he was young he loved nothing more than to rip around the woods behind his house on his bike. But then when he lost his sight came the period he calls “the void” – without being able to take part in sport.
But that changed in his early 20s when he met the 99ers
cycling group who were doing a Malin to Mizen charity cycle to raise money to
fund guide dogs and he joined them, though the progress wasn’t immediate. He
initially went down the endurance route, aided by Cycling Ireland and competing
internationally, but always feeling he may be better as a track sprinter.
Finally, in 2016 when on the Malin to Mizen cycle a conversation with strength and conditioning coach Conor Kennedy led to an introduction to Eamonn Byrne, an established track sprinter.
They teamed up and in March, 2017, found themselves selected
for Ireland for the World Track Championships in Los Angeles; a little rough
and ready as a duo initially but with no shortage of grunt.
The following year it clicked; they went back to the
Worlds and took 6th, posting the times they needed to secure a place on the
Cycling Ireland high performance programme with funding and full supervision.
The following year, 2018, they won silver in the tandem sprint at the UCI World
Cup in London.
The last year has been good, if unusual. Gordon and Byrne finished the Worlds in Canada on February 1st last year and didn’t set foot on a proper velodrome again until this month, over 13 months later, in Majorca. With international racing suspended due to Covid-19 and no velodrome in Ireland, they did what they could.
But Gordon insists the lock-down has been good for him.
He’s been working from home, thus cutting out all of the “dead time you spend
commuting”. He insists it’s been “a dream” – an unusual situation allowing him
to focus hard on his cycling and with great support, including from his
colleagues.
He’s trained at home and, with Byrne, at the gym in the
Irish Sports Institute. They also have access to the outdoor velodrome on
Sundrive Road, Dublin. They’ve even taken a starting gate from there and set it
up on the indoor athletics track on the national sports campus in Abbotstown,
Dublin, and practiced their starts. They’ve effectively put the pandemic to one
side and focused on getting fast and stronger and nailing their best start,
right out of the gate.
Gordon says a team of performance staff and advisers at
Cycling Ireland and Sport Ireland have looked after everything – even providing
a life coach to help him and Byrne plan their daily lives to balance work,
training and recovery and run it all around Covid19.
It means they have both been free to focus exclusively on
getting faster on their bike; the kind of support Gordon says neither he nor
Byrne take for granted. Gordon spoke to stickybottle yesterday from a Cycling
Ireland training camp in Majorca, where the really serious business is about to
unfold.
On the Spanish island this weekend he will climb onto his
tandem with Byrne and attempt to put down the performances they need to meet
the criteria to represent Ireland sprinting on the track at the Tokyo Paralympics.
For Gordon, thoughts of Louise and Nora are uppermost in
his mind. He has been away from them for this camp for weeks and he’s
determined to make that count and secure the coveted seat on the plane to
Tokyo.
Ask what it would mean to him to get there and you are in
danger of being run over by his passion for sport and country, including the
enduring buzz he feels any time he puts on the Irish kit, even for training.
“We're in an incredibly privileged position. We are
very lucky and very fortunate. And we want to take that opportunity that
we've been given by Sport Ireland and NPHET and the Government and to
be able to go out to Tokyo and to say: ‘Here's the performance of a lifetime, thanks
for the support’.
“To become a Paralympian or an Olympian is the single greatest level of achievement for any sporting person. And I don't just want to go there to become a Paralympian. I want to go there and get amongst it. Every day you wake up more hungry for it.”
- Martin Gordon was speaking to stickybottle in support of the Paralympics Ireland fundraising campaign, ‘The Next Level’, which has raised over €70,000 to date for the Irish team going to Tokyo. The fund will also be invested in para-athletes after the Games and you can contribute at paralympics.ie
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