By Louise Hickey
Orla Walsh is currently preparing for her first World Track Championships with the Irish team. She may be an experienced international athlete but the life she now leads - everything geared towards going faster on her bike - is a million miles from the partying she did in her 20s. She has transformed herself from someone who was a big drinker and smoker into a regular member of the national team, racing all over the world. Having been introduced to the bike through cycling to work, she initially tried road racing and then quickly found her niche on the track. Currently training full time at the UCI's World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland, she has also built a large following on Instagram. She documents her training, racing and recovery and that Instagram content helps to pay the bills. She tells stickybottle's Louise Hickey about her journey so far.
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How did you start your cycling career?
I started riding my bike to work in 2016. It just seemed more convenient than other transport at the time. I commuted in and out on a 10km route for a year on a bike my dad gave me. And then in 2017, after I'd joined a club, Cycling Ireland advertised a talent transfer trial. Orla Hendron in Orwell Wheelers encouraged me to apply for it. I didn't really meet the criteria of what they were looking for, which was for people who played other sports to transfer into cycling. But I did a few local crits and I think I got a podium in one so I applied. I remember thinking, 'I’m not going to get selected, but I’d like to see how I compare to real athletes'. The trial was a three-minute test and two five-second power tests and I got selected. So that was the start of me getting into the Cycling Ireland elite programme, I guess. I think they would have tested between 50 and 100 riders and I was in the top eight. From that start, I raced my first UCI World Cup at the end of 2017 in the team pursuit, because that was all that was on offer from Cycling Ireland. They didn’t have any sprint programmes at the time, and still don’t. I switched over to sprint at the end of 2019 and I’ve been doing sprint events since then. For the last year I’ve been based in Switzerland at the UCI's centre.
Do you regret not having started sooner?
People always ask me that, but I had absolutely no interest in sport before I started cycling. I mean, it would have been nice if I had been interested, but I wasn’t. So I’m not gonna mourn something that didn’t happen. Part of me thinks 'I could have hit a higher peak' or 'I’m 10 years older than than my competition'. But at the end of the day, I’ve only been doing this for a couple of years. There are riders who are nearly 40-years-old who have been world champions so it’s not like I can’t do it at my age. I'm just on a slightly different timeline than everybody else.
Would you say cycling helped you mentally as well as physically?
Absolutely. I mean, I definitely overdid it with the alcohol and the partying and the smoking. It was quite excessive. I probably would have been the most chaotic of my friends. I also sought out chaotic people. There were a lot of people in my life that I’m really not friends with anymore but I would have hung out with them a lot during those periods of my life. Some people think it’s great. They look up to me as an inspiration. But part of me thinks I’m just an obsessive kind of person. I’ve just become addicted to sport as opposed to drinking or going out partying all the time. I’ve just kind of switched my focus. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a healthy obsession, but cycling is definitely better for my mental health than what I was choosing to do before. It’s a great release. I’ve learned more about myself in the last five years than I had in the previous 10 years. That's because of the challenges that come with being an elite athlete; working with a team, working with coaches, and having to perform under pressure. All those things you don’t encounter when you're opting for other lifestyle choices.
After you started cycling and began some races, what were the next steps?
I began doing the local Corkagh Park racing in Dublin. It then became a steep learning curve. I quickly went from doing National Road Series racing and local road races to learning how to ride the track and then being at a World Cup. That all happened within a year. It was intense and it was really stressful. I think they just threw us in at the deep end of it to see how we’d handle it. The goal at the time was trying to get an Irish team pursuit selection up to a competitive international standard so we could work towards the Paris Olympics. And though I later switched away from endurance - away from the team pursuit - and into sprinting, the team pursuit set-up is working for the girls who are now still doing it. They’re probably on course now to qualify a spot at the Paris Olympics. After I began trying sprint-based events I won my first national championship in the 500 metres. That was kind of the beginning of me leaning towards the sprint category properly. At that time I was thinking 'well, I’m still training in endurance, and I can win a sprint event…'. My physiology would be more suited to being a sprinter.
What was your biggest win nationally before racing internationally?
National Championships would probably be my biggest win on the track. I would have podiumed in the National Road Series races a few times in 2017. Road racing was never really my thing. It was just trying to get to the endgame. Like, I didn’t understand why people wanted to break away. I was thinking 'why can’t we ride easy and sprint it out at the end?' I like what I do now. It is like night and day comparing those road races to the sprint events I'm now focused on. In track sprinting we do high intensity - 10, 20 or 30-second efforts and then sit down for 30 minutes and then do it again. It’s totally different.
Where did you make your debut for Ireland and what was that like?
My debut was at the Manchester World Cup at the end of 2017. We’d only learned to ride a track in July of that year, just a couple of months prior to racing our first World Cup. I will always remember feeling imposter syndrome… 'Oh God, I absolutely should not be here'. Even the whole time during the talent transfer, I was thinking to myself 'they've made a mistake picking me'. I was thinking 'I’m not an athlete', because in my head I wasn’t. I was there with all these other girls who are really talented. But I was improving so I should have believed in myself at the time. Looking back, I didn’t. It took me a while to start being confident and believing that I was worthy of being there and being in the green jersey of Ireland. Anyway, we had our first debut together as a team pursuit quartet. We were more or less definitely going to come last because we were racing against world class riders. But for us it was more of a case of just getting up and doing the race. It was about getting used to that level of intensity in the environment; the cameras in your face and the audience and other stuff. And yeah, we did it.
Did your nerves get in the way at all?
Yeah, I was very nervous. There were times when I thought I didn’t want to be there at all because I was so nervous. But I’ve worked a lot on my nerves. Now it’s more a case of 'Okay, I know I’m gonna feel nervous, because if I didn’t well then that would be strange, that would mean I don’t care'. And I do care.
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You have a big Instagram following, does that help financially?
Oh yes of course it does. Of course. Instagram is the main reason that I’m able to do this. I wasn’t funded. We got partial social support when I was doing team pursuit. But there were two years when I wasn’t getting income, because I didn’t fit the funding criteria but I was getting support during my transition to racing in terms of sport services, nutrition, doctors, SSC. Cycling Ireland supported me going to races and they also supported me when I was going to the UCI centre. I’m grateful for all of that support. But the income from Instagram is also needed to pay for food, rent, and travel.
So would you consider yourself an influencer?
Yes. The way it works for me is I have three brands at the moment that I have contracts with. They’re annual contracts. I get paid monthly, and I have deliverables. It’s basically advertising, to put it simply. I might get a job on the off chance; to be part of a campaign. I was a part of a Skoda campaign, where I was in an advert. Another time I was in a Decathlon campaign, so they would just pay me a once-off fee. I’m grateful that people were interested in my story because if they weren’t it would make this life very difficult. You have to hit a high standard to get funding from Sport Ireland. Thankfully, I did hit that standard last year. I have funding from Sport Ireland to pay for the UCI centre. Hopefully, I have it again next year. That remains undetermined. It’s a hustle. People think it’s a glam life. Absolutely not.
Is that funding going toward your training?
Ireland doesn’t have a sprint programme so all of that funding I get from Sport Ireland this year goes to the UCI centre. I'm able to train out here, I go to some races with the UCI and I have an elite team here to train with. In Ireland I wouldn't have a sprint set-up to be part of and train with. So my funding from Sport Ireland pays for my programme her in Switzerland versus, say, some of the girls who have a funding programme that would be their money to live off. Again, I’m lucky that I have other sources of income.
How did the opportunity to go to Switzerland come about?
I’ve been here since March of this year. I also did a stint last year for three or four months. This is the longest I’ve ever been here, which is great because I’m seeing so many improvements. I can’t remember who reached out to who, but I know our head coach here in Aigle was in touch with Cycling Ireland. He’s always looking for eligible riders around the world; looking for people who fit the criteria in terms of doing fast times. Because I was an unsupported sprinter, there was lots of room for improvement. I had a trial period here of about six weeks and it went well, so that led to me continuing here. It’s a really good environment. We all push each other on. Even yesterday, for example, there was only four of us on the track; three boys and me. They were all racing each other on the track, and then me chasing them. I was just getting dropped but I was chasing some of the fastest guys in the world. One of them has the world record for 200m. It’s very humbling. It keeps you on your toes. It brings the best out of me because I’m fighting so hard. If you’re racing against someone slower than you, or someone around the same speed, you don’t put everything in. So this is a good place for me, despite being very expensive to live here.
How do you feel about the World Championships?
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think this year has been the most consistent for me. I haven’t been injured. I had a little cold last week but nothing major and I was back to it again. There have been times when I’ve crashed or had to take a couple of weeks off due to injury, like the end of last year. I was in a big hole then because I was badly injured but I just kept training through. Eventually it emerged I had, and still have, a cyst on my right hip. I couldn’t get the power out, I couldn’t get into the position I needed on the bike, but I was still training. I’m managing it now. Since March I haven’t had any issues and hopefully, that’ll help me at the Worlds.
In terms of training, what does an average week look like now?
At the moment, we have three track sessions a week, two gym sessions, and two road sessions. For example, yesterday (Tuesday) was a double day - we had gym in the morning and track in the afternoon. Monday we just had track. Today I had road. Tomorrow’s track again. Friday is gym and Saturday is road. We’re training every day except for Sunday. The gym is important. We need to be super strong to get the big gears up to speed and to be able to accelerate quickly. We do bigger blocks in the off-season. We'd do some weeks of three to four gym sessions per week and cut back on track sessions. You're doing all that gym time just to build all that strength and then you bring it back onto the track. For each track session, we do different things. Monday, it would have been high-speed stuff, meaning we did motor pacing. We are paced behind a motorbike and then we have to hold that speed for two laps. Yesterday was acceleration - so that’s high peak power stuff. Tomorrow will be speed endurance, meaning speed… but for ages.
What would you need to achieve to be happy when the time comes to look back on your cycling career?
Achievement-wise, I just want to get the most out of myself. If I’ve already hit my peaks and I’ve already gone as fast as I can go then I’m happy. I wanted the indoor 200 record, it was like a monkey on my back, though I knew I could do it. And I got that record at the European Championships this year. So I have all the sprint national records now. That was one thing I wanted before I ever called it a day. Now it’s a case of 'how can I beat my own records?'
What advice would you give somebody starting cycling?
My number one piece of advice would be to join a cycling club if you can. I had no intention of racing I just wanted to enjoy riding my bike. People were encouraging me into racing and everyone is supportive in clubs. At least that was my experience. I also picked a club that I thought would have more women. I know a lot of the clubs are very male-dominated and there might only be a handful of women whereas Orwell wheelers have a ton of women. I'd encourage any newcomers to talk to people who are into cycling, they’ll give you advice. People don’t know where to start and my advice is to find someone who knows what they’re doing. People are always willing to help.
