Before the likes of Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma), Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) and Fem van Empel (Pauwels Sauzen-Bingoal) rolled into Dublin for the UCI World Cup on Sunday, Glenn Kinning won the support race on the course. He emerged best in the combined senior and masters event on Saturday on the Sport Ireland Campus. After his win he reflected on just how far Irish cyclocross has come in the two decades he's been involved.
He remembers struggling to get a UCI-ranked race off the ground in his native Belfast. He says there was a time, not so long ago, when his efforts to bring a cyclocross star to Ireland turned out to be an impossible dream.
People like Kinning - a 38-year-old married father of two - are the backbone of cycling in Ireland. They live and breathe the game - organise, and ride, the races. They would do anything to push forward the domestic scene, just for the love of it. Kinning has invested his time and money in young up and coming riders and the first main race of the cyclocross season each year is the GP Brian Kinning in Belfast; organised by Kinning in memory of his late father.
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He spoke for many in Irish cycling when he told stickybottle it would take some time before the enormity of what we witnessed at the weekend even sunk in; the biggest stars in the world ripping it up in our back yard.
"Even to comprehend there was a World Cup in Ireland, never mind that the top riders came here… Two or three years ago we wouldn't have even thought of this, never mind 20 years ago," he said.
Kinning has represented Ireland to World Championship level at cyclocross; a member of the national team in the elite race at the Worlds in Valkenburg in 2018. However, this weekend he decided to forego riding the main World Cup race on Sunday. Doing so would have made him ineligible to ride the masters Europeans and Worlds next year. But opting for the support race in Dublin did not dampen his enthusiasm. Indeed, he seemed to have more opportunity to savour enormity of the occasion.
"There was a nice buzz at the start," he said of the special atmosphere that went with racing on a World Cup course. "When they opened the course up for the practice session, everyone was waiting and everyone rode around together for a lap or two. So it was a nice atmosphere; all the kids, all the seniors and we're all riding around together.
Kinning was the central figure in organising the Belfast International cyclocross race a few years ago; a UCI-ranked event. He had also explored the possibility of bringing cyclocross legend Sven Nys to Ireland.
However, those plans seemed complex and out of reach at the time. The financial challenges presented by the Belfast International proved insurmountable after the first year. So, for him, having Flanders Classics organise a World Cup race in Ireland feels extraordinary.
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"It's not going to sink in for a few days, until everyone shares all the photos and that kind of thing," he said. "I pulled the plug early on the (Belfast International) second year because of the financial strain. But now we have the UCI race in Clonmel and that seems to be standard now. Hopefully it will happen every year; a UCI event in Ireland."
Kinning has been organising cyclocross races since about 2015 and has raced 'cross for about 20 years, meaning he has really seen the discipline develop from its niche early days to the present day.
"I can remember doing the National Champs back then and I think there was about five of us on the line, it's come a long way," he said. "Even having two bikes 10 years ago for a race… nobody even thought of that. But now, even if you're not going to take cyclocross that seriously, you have to have two bikes."
He said he was delighted to win the support race on Saturday when three masters riders - himself, Alan Bingham (Newry Wheelers) and Marc Flavin (Dungarvan CC) - went through the seniors and took the podium places.
"I couldn't feel my fingers on the first lap so the gear changes weren't too good," he said. "But once I got up to (Bingham) I was happy enough. I got a gap and then pushed on, but it was a good race between the two of us.
"The older riders seem to have a stronger foothold in cyclocross, but that's changing now. We have the likes of Dean Harvey and others coming through," said Kinning, who riders under the branding of Kinning Cycles, his bike shop in Belfast.
"The course was proper cyclocross and proper conditions; freezing fog and 1 degree, really epic conditions," he said. "There was big long straights and you weren't really braking on the corners, everything felt quite wide. There was two or three lines around each corner.
"Sometimes we're guilty of setting the courses up (in Ireland) in a way that we force one line. But you came away from that course and realise the thought process that goes into it," he said, clearly thinking ahead to the Ulster Cyclocross Championships which he is promoting this Sunday.
