Paul Kimmage has opened up about his early career, his relationships with the key people in Irish cycling, the community here in Ireland and his journalism.
Paul Kimmage has spoken of the ending of his relationship with the Irish cycling community as a result of his writing about doping in the sport.
In a feature-length interview with Eamon Dunphy on the former soccer pro’s new podcast, Kimmage says the reaction to his book Rough Ride was lasting.
It changed the nature of his relationship, not only with professional cycling, but also with the home scene.
And such was the backlash that Kimmage says his father Christy, a champion cyclist in his day and a hugely respected figure, was hurt by it.
“My ties now with Irish cycling are non-existent,” Kimmage tells Dunphy on The Stand podcast.
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“Because of Rough Ride and because of the stance I took, I lost pretty much... I won’t say most of the friends; but certainly it ended my relationship with the Irish cycling community, which is sad you know.
“The thing that really hurt me was that what I did wasn’t... I didn’t set out to destroy cycling.
“I set out to actually help it. And this kind of perverse view that somehow talking about the drug culture, that was deep rooted in the game, was harming it.
“(The reaction) was a complete mystery to me, I just didn’t understand it. And yet that’s the mentality that’s always reigned in the sport.
“And that’s the stance that the Irish cycling community thought; ‘Oh look, Kimmage is setting out... he’s bitter because he was never any good and he’s doing this because this is his revenge’.
“What an absolute ludicrous notion that was. That really hurt; it really hurt my father, it really hurt my father.”
Kimmage's father Christy was a champion cyclist and a giant of the Irish scene. And he was hurt by the reaction to his son's book Rough Ride.
He said father Christy, who sadly died recently, was “one of the real heroes of Irish cycling”.
Kimmage recalled an incident in 1991 when he had begun to regard himself as “a big shot” in sports journalism.
He went to interview Formula 1 team owner Eddie Jordan and the motor racing boss greeted him by asking him if he was related to Christy Kimmage. He said it was an indication to him of his father’s standing.
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And because his father was so well liked, the fact he was caught up in the fall-out from Rough Ride has clearly stayed with Kimmage.
“It really hurt him because he knew what I was doing; he knew where I had come from.
“And it really hurt him that people had turned on me the way that they did; people who should have known better really.”
In a compelling interview – over two parts of just over 40 minutes each - Kimmage speaks to Dunphy about Martin Earley, his father winning the last two stages of the Rás and Shay Elliott.
In speaking about Elliott, Kimmage tells a poignant story about the first Irish Tour de France yellow jersey weeping in his panel beaters shop in Dublin while listening to the commentary of the Tour on a French radio station the day Tim Simpson died.
He says he has never lost the respect he had for those who make their living through pro cycling.
Kimmage also explains how a meeting with Dunphy on the 1989 Tour, two days before he abandoned the race and his pro career, had inadvertently encouraged him to stop cycling and take up journalism full time.
He was writing his seminal Tour Diary for The Sunday Tribune under editor Vincent Browne at the time. And when he stopped cycling he took to journalism full-time.
He wrote Rough Ride, which detailed doping in the sport and how cycling’s authorities were complicit in it, shortly after he stopped racing and it won sports book of the year in Britain.
It was released to critical acclaim and while the culture of doping exposed in the book was proven to be true in the years that followed, few in cycling thanked him for holding a mirror up to the sport at the time.
The topic of Stephen Roche’s and Sean Kelly’s reaction to Rough Ride also comes up in the interview with Dunphy and Kimmage says Roche was like a big brother and somebody he genuinely loved.
He offered of Martin Earley: “He said nothing, and I respect him for that”.
Brutally honest, Kimmage reveals his own father told him that had he been faced with the same choices to take drugs or not as a pro, he probably would have done it.
And Kimmage himself says had be signed for a team alongside Roche or Kelly when he first turned pro he would have “done anything”.
All of the above topics are discussed in the first part if the podcast, below, which is 40 minutes in length.
And in the second instalment, which is 47 minutes long, Kimmage talks about his journalism and, of course, Lance Armstrong and David Walsh.
Dunphy's interview with Kimmage, in two parts
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