PARALYMPIC GAMES:WHEN THEY go looking for a bit of hush for the anthems at the Paralympic Games, the line is always the same. "Ladies and gentlemen, as is customary, could those who are able to stand please do so for the national anthem of . . ."
Around teatime yesterday, the voice on the tannoy only got as far as his first comma before being all but drowned out by an olé-olé-oléing crowd who had just seen Mark Rohan have a gold medal draped around his neck. Customary is as customary does.
Rohan took gold here in the 16km time trial around the punishing hills of Brands Hatch, backing up the world title he won in Denmark last year. The day’s panning had already found a couple of unexpected nuggets in bronze medals for the tandem pairs of James Brown/Damien Shaw and Catherine Walsh/Fran Meehan but it was Rohan whose name had been in lights all the way through the build-up. As Irish success frothed up around him, he had to make sure he didn’t get lost on the bubbles.
“I stayed focused,” he said afterwards. “The guys around me kept me focused. With 20 minutes to go to the start, during the warm-up, I could hear Damien and James coming through with a medal and then Fran and Catherine coming through with another one. They inspired me to go on and do what I had to do.”
What he had to do was tough beyond reason. Brands Hatch was designed for cars and karts, not cyclists. And definitely not handcyclists, who find themselves with every sinew drawn just to get up some of the hills. The most brutish of them comes around three-quarters of the way around, a long, steep monster that slows every handcyclist in the field to a crawl. For the last few agonising yards until they reach the apex, they are paddling in treacle.
Rohan told us afterwards that as he approached it for the second and last time, he knew he had 10 seconds to make up on Israeli rider Koby Lion. The finishing times didn’t quite bear this out – he won by 11 seconds in the end but seemed to think he had won by only three. One way or another, dealing with that hill at that time was the winning and losing of the race. Rohan hauled himself up it and sped down the other side and away to gold.
“It’s tough to get it right because you come into so fast,” he said. “You come into it at around 65kph and within 20 seconds you’re down to 9kph. So you have to get the gears right and thankfully we did. At that stage on the second lap I was about 10 seconds down so I just had to bury myself. The training we’ve done for the last couple of months really paid off.
“I was expecting to have to do that. I knew I had it in the tank. But the thing is, you don’t win a gold medal by just crossing the line. Well, some people do. Jason [Smyth] and Michael [McKillop] do. But in hand-cycling you don’t.
“For most of us, it’s split seconds. And it’s actually more rewarding to win by a small margin when you’ve gone and buried yourself for 35-40 minutes to get there. So I’m just really, really delighted to create history today.
“We had a video of the track that we’ve been looking at every day over the last couple of months. The gear selection was right and the equipment was right. With all the preparation we’ve done over the last couple of months, I really enjoyed that today.”
Each to his own, Mark. The punishment continues tomorrow when he returns for the road race.
This time, instead of two laps of the track they have to do six. Proof that a man who has come back from being paralysed from the chest down to Paralympic champion is made of different stuff from the rest of us can be found in the fact that he’s itching to get out and tackle it again.
“I can’t wait,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out on that track again. We really have focused the training on the time trial but the road race is going to be similar. It’s going to be six laps instead of two. I’m hoping that we can get something similar to that.”
Hoping in confidence.
