Tim Cassidy was 15th in the junior Worlds and in the years that followed he raced with an elite group of Irish riders including Nicolas Roche, Dan Martin, Páidí O'Brien, Denis Lynch, Philip Deignan and Mark Scanlon.
By Brian Canty
Tim Cassidy was one of the best Irish riders of the last two decades but through a “stupid” self-inflicted injury, a near-secured professional contract vanished pretty much overnight.
He recalls the moment he knew the game was up when his ankles could no longer take the force he was placing them under. All because he wore worn cleats; incorrect cleat alignment the official problem.
Retirement, despite a ferocious battle in refusing to accept it, was the only solution.
“I raced Mark Scanlon a lot and it was actually him who said it to me," Cassidy recalls of the former junior world champion and Tour de France rider with Ag2r.
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"I was riding with the Sean Kelly team. We rode the GP Triberg-Schwarzwald (1.1) and he said to me.
“It was a crazy, crazy race; a mountain for the whole thing. He said ‘what are you riding with those ankles for’. And I knew my career was over then."
Cassidy, 32, from Dublin but now happily married to Gayle with kids in Richill, Armagh, was tipped for a great career from a young age.
And when he left the U23 ranks a pro career was tantalisingly close.
He had a stunning couple of years with VC La Pomme in France between 2004 and 2005 and was one of the best riders in one of the best teams in the country back then.
“That 2005 season was a huge year for me, I had a huge amount of results,” he recalls.
“The year before I had a good year and I got a lot of respect from my manager at VC La Pomme," he says of Frederic Rostaing.
In his VC La Pomme days; a team that also saw Nicolas Roche, Dan Martin, Philip Deignan and Mark Scanlon pass through its ranks (Photo: Stephen McMahon)
“Four of us were offered top-of-the-range bikes. I was brought into that four ahead of all the French guys and international lads in the team.
“And that year from the first weekend of February right up to the start of May I don’t think I was outside the top 15 in any race; maybe once or twice.
“France in 2005 was a big year for the amateur scene then. I would say the La Pomme team I was in was one of the best in Europe that year.
"It didn’t matter what race or where we went but we had two or three in the top 10.”
He was always in the mix, but he learnt a few harsh lessons. One of which was your teammates aren’t always your friends.
“I went to a team camp in the Alps, came down and three days later I did the Tour de l’Oise stage race," he recalls.
“We won the first stage team TT, was sixth the next day, third the next stage, took yellow, got across to a break that had taken yellow on the road.
"The next day my whole team went up the road after 10k. And I remember Daryl Impey coming up to me and saying ‘where the fuck is everyone gone?’.
“We were left on our own there, he rode for a bit with me but it was unfortunate.
"We actually won the race and my teammate came up and apologised; he was too old (to turn pro) and the result would have sealed a contract for me.
“I got sick out of that race and never really raced again for a good bit.”
Philip Deignan, who won he Ronde l’Isard in 2004 as an amateur, was a teammate of Cassidy’s at VC La Pomme.
As juniors they were quite a pair, winning a huge number of races.
“We were together the whole way up the junior ranks and espoir ranks," he says of Deignan, now with Team Sky and a Vuelta stage winner."
In 2001 Cassidy won 19 races as a junior and also took 15th in the junior road race at the Worlds in Lisbon.
Though still a junior, he impressed everyone on the home scene so much he was named cyclist of the year.
Cassidy in the Irish jersey riding against top pros where he was able to hold his own and get into the thick of racing.
But the highs of his early success were followed by his first major setback – a head-on collision with a car near his home just after moving out of the junior ranks.
“It was my second week back on the bike after a winter break. I was 10 minutes from my house, cycling down a road in my 53 x 11 with a howling tailwind.
“We were meeting the lads for training and my dad was ahead of me. I was late and flat out trying to catch them when a taxi pulled out in front of me and I hit him straight on. I had a lot of issues with that.”
By issues he means a broken back and some severe haematomas that took months to heal.
“I was injured for the guts of five months and missed the first half of my first espoir season but I went to Belgium to what was the first Sean Kelly house.
"Deignan did as well and we raced the kermesse scene there. It was brilliant and then that winter I crashed on black ice and ended up needing a knee operation.
“I didn’t go to La Pomme until June (2003) because I was in rehab so I missed my first two years espoir, basically.”
He got going again and motivated by a desire to one day turn pro he got himself into the shape of his life.
“I wanted it big time, cycling was everything to me," he says.
“When I went to France we entered every race just thinking of how this is one step closer to a contract.”
He raced often and he raced hard, including when he wasn’t 100 per cent fit or healthy.
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“I probably should have rested a bit more than I did but I wanted it so badly," he recalls of his bid to turn pro.
“We were in this race and I got given out to for missing moves but I was still getting good results.
“I think five of my top 10s in 2005 I closed a two-minute gap on my own or maybe with one other; that kind of thing where you do all the riding and you end up fifth or fourth, I was getting really frustrated.
“We rode this big 1.2 race (La Roue Tourangelle) and literally for 180k I was just going at it the whole way. It was one of those situations where nothing would go.
"The manager pulled me into the office before it and said 'we won’t make a mistake with you like we did with Deignan',” in reference to the fact they believed the Donegal man went pro a year too early.
“He signed too early in the year after getting some very big results mid season. He could have gone to any of the big teams with his results.”
Though they are the same age, Cassidy looks more like Nicolas Roche's son in this photo.
Motivated by that, Cassidy put his head down: “We said we’d wait (to turn pro) and when I got one or two big results we’d get something good out of it.
“So in that race I’d say it took 180k for the elastic to snap, 10 of us got away, it was cat and mouse to the end and I frustratingly got third.
“But then I got sick and I missed about a month and that’s when things started to go downhill.
“I had so many results at the start of the year and I went back to Ireland. I did two big weeks of training at home, came back over to France, did the Tour of Girona, had a fairly decent showing.
“I thought I could take a break but I was told I was going to a camp in the Alps for eight days and I was thinking ‘I’m bolloxed’.”
“Three days after the camp I rode that Ronde de l'Oise stage race and ended up sick after it again.”
The European U23 championships followed and so too did more disaster.
“I still wasn't right after Ronde de l'Oise but I entered the Euros, still sick, because the pressure was mounting.
“I coughed the whole way round the course and tore cartilage in my ribs. That was one of my last races that year.”
The problem never really left him, which is when the Sean Kelly team in 2006 came calling.
“That year there was a lot of talk about getting a contract with a team and it all collapsed, but the Sean Kelly team was getting going and Kurt offered me a chance.
“I was still injured but he took me on and got me checked out. It turned out it wasn’t a heart issue like we thought, but torn cartilage in my ribs from coughing.
“Kurt offered me a chance while I was still injured but I was happy because we got to do these 1.1 races and against the pro teams, it was a nice window to be seen.
Riding as junior on the Irish team; members of the British national team to the left of shot, with team mate Paidi O'Brien just visible.
“So that winter I was waiting on a bike to come across and I was riding Look pedals with the La Pomme team but Speedplay with the Sean Kelly team.
“I was told the bike would be there in a week and I didn’t think anything of it.
“It was lazy on my part and I kept riding my bike and before I knew it it was four weeks and stupidly I had never changed my cleats.
"I ended up getting tendonitis in my ankles and they never really resolved.
“For that whole year I was racing, resting for two weeks, racing, two weeks rest. I didn’t train at all during the year.
“I had a chronic tendinitis of both ankles and ended up needing operations in both ankles and unfortunately to this day, it never repaired.
“Kurt tried his hardest; he brought me to so many people while I was over in Belgium.
“I saw so many people, but really, what I needed to do was stop for 2-3 months and just rehab the thing and not touch the bike.
“It could have been managed pretty easily. It was a stupid decision on my part and it was crazy.
“To be honest, my whole career on the bike was destroyed with injuries. It was a long sequence of events that led me into the team but when I look back; those stupid cleats that ended it all…”
Still, he looks back on some great memories; racing with Deignan and even Dan Martin, being named Irish Cyclist of the Year and taking on big pro teams and really making others suffer.
“I was well able to ride those big races; 2005 was when I got all the results," he says.
"That was the first year the ProTour and every race I was in was a UCI race and you had Ag2r and everyone and it wasn’t an issue racing these guys.
“AgriTubel, RAGT, then all the Italian and Spanish teams that were second division and a lot of them dropped down to what would have been first division, so it was very hard racing but I could manage it.”
He still follows the sport and is as passionate now as he was then. He still can’t ride, and will never be able to.
“I stepped back when I quit the bike, more to do with because it was hard to be around it and I ended up with two ankle operations and couldn’t ride the bike anymore.
“I couldn’t even do half an hour on the bike and it was very hard to be around bike racing.
“Through my injuries I met a lot of therapists along the way. I had a big interest in that.
"And I went down that route which is what I do now, working as a physical therapist in premises above the Bikeworx bike shop in Celbridge.”
He’s in the process of looking after the U23 Bikeworx riders and building a nice senior domestic team around them for development with the help of Derek Stenson and his brother.
There have even been approaches from Cycling Ireland to work with them this year as well.
“I started coaching a few riders because they were clients of mine and halfway through last year I was asked to get involved with the young lads.
“There were a few coming through, so it’s through those guys, almost by chance, I got back involved and I’m loving it now at the moment.”
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