Colin Lynch has achieved many triumphs but he has also endured his share of troubles and has now shared them in a piece about his life.
Paracyclist Colin Lynch has written a brilliantly honest story about battling depression. Struggling at times with the pain of his disability and now being without funding.
The former two-time world champion - in the TT and 3km pursuit - and current world hour record holder has been funded for the best part of a decade. This has allowed him train and compete all over the world.
However, he said because he has had a disappointing season and funding is largely dependent on the Worlds, he lost his grant.
Lynch is still determined to press on, in a bid to win another world title and Paralympic gold in Tokyo 2020.
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But his plans to continue riding at the top of the sport with no funding represent a big financial challenge for him.
And so he has sold a lot of his kit and even put his TT silver medal from the Rio 2016 Paralympics up for sale.
Celebrating the world hour record in 2016. He set a new marker for the C2 class. His 43.133km was 1.8km further than the unofficial record dating back to 1999.
“Most people I know freaked out when they heard that – how could I sell something so cherished?” Colin Lynch said.
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“The answer is simple: the memory and actual achievement of winning the medal will never leave me.”
The medal itself had little meaning for him. But the will to continue racing was more significant. And so he had offered the medal for sale on eBay with a high asking price.
Lynch said he believes he has been impacted by depression for many years. But his results of late and losing his funding, appears to have brought it to the fore.
He has been writing about his experiences on innervoice.life; producing a really honest piece that is well worth a read.
When driving away from the Worlds he said every bridge he drove over saw his mind ponder if it would be high enough to kill a person if they jumped off.
A smiling Colin Lynch about to get his time trial underway with Chris Froome and Joaquim Rodriguez for company in Japan racing the Saitama Criterium series in 2015.
“The world never gets to see me when I can’t get out of bed because I feel so down,” he writes.
“They don’t see me when I’m rolling around on the floor in agony from the pain I have in my stump,” he adds in reference to losing his leg.
“They don’t see me when I am struggling to leave the house and face the world because I feel paralysed by low self-esteem.”
Losing his left leg aged 20 year was a defining moment in his life. And while he has been very successful on the bike, he believes losing his leg fed into low self esteem.
It’s an excellent article by Colin Lynch, in which he speaks with great bravery and openness of his inner struggles, and his physical and financial issues even though to outsiders he would be regarded as successful.
It speaks about all of these issues at length in a story that you can read in full by following this link.
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