Martyn Irvine in his comeback race the weekend before last at the Danny O'Shea Memorial TT in Co Wicklow (Photo with thanks to Sorrento CC)
By Gerard Cromwell
Back in March, Martyn Irvine was quite literally on top of the world. Having taken a first ever track world title in Minsk the previous month, the 28-year-old Ards man was riding strongly in his second race in the colours of his new professional team, UnitedHealthcare.
At the Tour of Taiwan, Irvine was fitting into his new role for the American squad and showed his hand when he spent 20km out front towards the end of stage three before being reeled in with just 4km to go.
The next day however, disaster struck when Irvine got flicked into some road bollards in a high speed line-out and crashed out.
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“It started raining and I thought I’d better move up,” recalls the world track champion.
“Within a minute of thinking that, I was on the deck, sliding along. The bunch kind of flicked and I was an inch or two overlapped by the guy in front of me and had nowhere to go. All I can remember is holding my hands up to stop bollards hitting my head and face.”
Operated on in Taiwan, Irvine was told he had broken the head of his femur, something the doctors back home told him you’d be hard pressed to do with ‘a belt of a lumphammer’.
Although his leg was twice its normal size from flying home almost immediately after his operation, a trip to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast confirmed that the operation in Taiwan had been a success.
His season however, if not his fledgling professional career, still looked in jeopardy for a while as he spent a month in bed, unable to put weight on his leg.
“It’s a long day when you’re just lying in bed and hobbling to the nearest chair and back,” he says.
“In the early stages I was useless. I needed Grace to do everything. It took me an hour to do the smallest things. It was slow, just sitting around waiting on the bone to heal."
"The scar tissue was the worst thing, trying to get the range of movement back, even bending my knee. It took me weeks to get a 90 degree bend in it. That was sore but I never got too miserable about it, kind of just looked on the bright side. These things happen for a reason, I kept telling myself.”
Months of physiotherapy at the Northern Ireland Sports Institute followed before Irvine could even walk properly again, let alone get back on his bike.
“Once the bone half healed I could try and start to move around but my leg was weak as water, all shrunk away. After a month of just basic stuff they got me walking on the anti-gravity machine to get the mechanics back. I’d literally hobble onto it but it can take you down to 20pc of your body weight so it was a lot easier to walk on it.”
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Some gym work and leg-strengthening yoga poses followed until, five weeks ago, Irvine took his first tentative pedal strokes on his bike. It was then he realised that the dream of coming back for the national championships at the end of June was just that.
“That was the most depressed I got, when I got back on the bike,” he says.
“I realised I was kidding myself trying to come back for the nationals. My first spin only lasted 20 minutes and it was horrible. I was weak as water.”
Irvine persevered however and since then has spent a week training in Majorca, has progressed to five-hour spins and won his comeback race, the Danny O’Shea Memorial time trial in Wicklow last week, before another four hour spin in the mountains.
“I can’t really track it in my head when I started getting better. Two weeks ago was my first five hour ride. I probably shouldn’t have done it to be honest. It was 120 watts for five hours."
"I probably only did 90km or something but I could sit in the bike which was the main thing. After Majorca I felt good that Monday and started looking at the calendar and saw the time trial and went down."
"I was surprised. I didn’t know what to think. I said I’d go down and ride hard for 20 minutes. I’d been doing steady efforts before that and sort of jumped in, but did a decent time. I think it was 30mph average.”
Riding to and from the Seamus Kennedy Memorial in Dunboyne the next day gave Irvine another 220km in his legs but he still has pain and is not completely back to strength yet.
“On the bike, out of the saddle, I can feel this weird pain over the top of the pedal stroke. It’s not where the hip broke. It’s more where the metal is, I think, in my thigh."
"When I get tired I’m limping on it so there’s still something not right. If I was to run up stairs I’d be in a fair bit of pain at the top. Matt Brammeier was actually sound. He was on to me, telling me what not to do, and was one of the few people who said hello when I was lying on my bed."
"He had a rod in his leg and got it out last year but at the moment, I don’t want to get mine out because there’ll be a big chunk of my leg missing and that’s another month or two of rehab. This time last week I started feeling normal on the bike."
"Before that I felt like I was fighting it all the time. I was just going through the motions but I never thought about stopping. I piss and moan about it sometimes but not being able to ride my bike made me realise how much I actually love it.”
Irvine has used an anti-gravity chamber it assist in weight bearing on his leg in the early stages of his rehab
