Feature Interview
7 November 2003
PJ NOLAN INTERVIEW: THE PRESIDENT'S ANGLE (Part 2) Click Here for Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
SS:
Ciarán McKenna, Paul Butler and Phil Cassidy all stepped down from their
positions on the High Performance Commission this year. Could those situations
have been handled differently? Have you any regrets about how things went?
PJ:
I regret that they stood down…they are all personal decisions of those
people. I suppose it is symptomatic of the fact that we are under so much
pressure as volunteers. Certainly the amount of work – especially what Ciarán
was doing – was just phenomenal. The amount of work that everyone involved in
these commissions does is phenomenal. People have various different reasons for
stepping down. I do regret that they decided to do so…they would be welcome
back any time. I suppose sometimes people need to reassess what they are doing.
But there is no point in saying that it is not a loss – it is a huge loss when
people like that decide to step away from the organisation.
SS: You were talking about this massive workload….will this be a permanent thing or will it settle down in a couple of years?
PJ: No, there is no settling down. The compliance is huge to keep going. If you look at what happened this year, the membership increased, the Special Olympics took place – again, Alice and a lot of people did a heap of work there – and there were cycling people who gave a lot of their time to do that. The park racing was reintroduced and the underage membership is up fifty percent on two years ago. Padraig Marrey is doing an awesome job as development officer but because he is doing so well, it creates more work. It doesn’t create less work for the volunteers, it creates more. If you take the 170,000 euro we got to complete the Sundrive Road project – I don’t know how Phil Collins keeps going with the stuff that he does. I talked about the compliance there…when we started off with this, it seemed like, okay, we will get the thing done. Now we have raised 420,000 euros altogether for this. But to actually get it built…if somebody knows what it is like to get a builder to put an extension on their house, they can imagine what it is like to go through three different government departments. Now the Dublin City Council are brilliant and the guy Eamon Dunne in Sundrive Road is a super guy, an absolutely super guy. Phil has a great working relationship with everybody. But even at that, we have had to go back and revisit the thing two or three times to get building the National Cycling School and all that type of stuff. That is a huge cost and that is one of the reasons why Phil stood back from the Olympics team managers job, because he had to try to keep this other show on the road.
The commercial sponsorship thing will be about 150,000 euros this year, between Hibernian and other stuff we are doing to bring in commercial activity. When I came in (to the position of President), I think the amount from the year before was about three thousand pounds. Now I am not saying that is to do with me – I am just saying that that level of activity takes a lot of activity to look after, when you are dealing with people. Then there is the whole thing about performances and what people have to look at.
SS: With regards to underage number, you talk about an increase. Is that an increase of people actually racing, or people getting licences as a result of Padraig going to the schools? I am not sure how the mechanism works.
PJ: No, we don’t encourage people just to take out free licences for the crack. They don’t actually do that. One of the things we have to consider is that I think there are 5,000 kids visited by Barbara Connolly in the schools skills programme, yet very few of those have converted into actual membership. To some extent that is because the clubs aren’t taking up those people or there isn’t a follow through…that is a problem, that we don’t have enough clubs interested. Padraig will say himself that he finds some clubs are great but some clubs aren’t interested in taking on young people. The amount of people racing underage is up, but then again there are not enough clubs promoting races during the summer. It can be two or three weeks before young lads can race again.
Padraig has started grass-track racing down in Ballinrobe and he has also got a one mile-long loop on the ambulance track around Ballinrobe racecourse. This is also being used as an off-road circuit. We have also talked to Fairyhouse and they have agreed to give us next year the raceway around there. It is only three and a half meters wide so it may be a bit narrow for racing, but it could be okay for people who are just getting introduced to time trials or little road races for children. But there are those things there that we are trying to do.
So there is increased participation, but having said that, it is not nearly high enough.
SS: What is the future direction, then, if you say that clubs aren’t taking on enough of the young riders?
PJ: Well, some clubs aren’t. It is not a criticism of people, it is just that people have other stuff to do. What we need to do is the more young riders we get, the more parents we get and the more parents we get, the more potential organisers we get. That is what we need to do. It is all a case of critical mass and getting new people into the sport, both as administrators and as competitors.
SS: There are a couple of motions going to the AGM enforcing the need for underage races at Sunday race meetings during the season. What is your feeling on that?
PJ: I think in most cases it is very valid. There may be some races where there isn’t actually the manpower. I come from a club which promotes ten open races a year and I know what it is like. On our day of the Meath Grand Prix, we have under 12, under 14, under 16 and then two other races. You are talking about five races and a lot of resources to run that. Sometimes that may not be available but a lot of times it can be done. Certainly, it is very important to keep these kids interested.
One of the things which will be ready next year is the track…I think Sundrive road will be a huge plus for us. Another of the exciting things is the BMX is going to be in the Olympics, in 2008, and we are actively looking at that and possibilities for it. We are talking to people at the moment to see how we can loop into that. Maybe downhill mountainbikers need to look at that because they seem to be the craziest guys around! They did very well this year….
SS: On the subject of mountain biking, at the AGM there was a feeling that there was a lack of interest from the board, that it still has predominantly a road focus. I have noticed that those involved in women’s cycling also feels that the men’s road scene is the predominant one.
PJ: It is a meritocracy, this organisation… You are talking about two different things, you are talking about development and you are talking about high performance as well. Certainly there has only ever been one miracle of the loaves and fishes, as far as I am aware. We would all like to give more resources to every part of this organisation. We have come from a very shaky financial background. Peter Thornton and Stuart Hallam have done a serious job on keeping that right, and we can’t overspend on any area because we just don’t have the money. So we can only put finite resources into each area. There are probably more people road racing in the organisation, but there is more carding money per capita going to mountainbiking. If you divide up the amount of money which is spent….I would think that where we are heading for in the future is that if a twelve or ten or eight or fifteen year old is introduced to cycling, that all particular aspects of the sport are given equal billing, so to speak. So nobody is being encouraged to do mountainbiking or track or BMX or road racing in any particular way. It is a case that for each rider, who has the best deal for them? Some of them may be more interested in mountainbiking. Certainly with regard to the board, what we will do is set a budget at the start of the year which reflects the money we have available.
If you look at what happened in Britain, they have guys on the track who are riding the road as well. There is a whole cross-over situation there. I know Phil Collins is very strong on this, that we need to be crossing over from one discipline to another. Take Martin Earley – he was a world class Tour de France stage winner and he rode the mountainbike at the Olympics. There is that…people need to be multi-disciplined. If you look at what has happened to the UCI calendar with regard to track, trade teams are now going to be allowed in world cups. That is a whole new change, it used to be national teams. So to say that we support mountainbiking or track racing or road more than any other, that is not correct. At the end of the day, all we are is a service provider to the people who are in the organisation. For people to say ‘we need to break away and form a different organisation’ (as someone suggested at the MTB Commission AGM) that really is not the way to do it. Cycling Ireland is the body that is recognised by the UCI, and that is the way it is going to stay. People have to realise that we work within huge restraints financially and also with regards to human resources. That is why we formed the commissions, because what we did is create a type of Federal system whereby people who are interested in a particular branch of the sport could go off and do that particular branch of the sport.
With regard to women’s racing, if you look at what happened this year, we sent….I think it was nine women to the world B championships. We had a league which has been running for the past three years. That has been helped out by volunteers themselves, a lot of people standing on corners week in, week out. Initially this year there were four women to go to the world B championships. We were subsequently asked for two more women plus a coach to go and we agreed to do that. All in all, we did that. We also sent women to the world B track championships and a woman to the world time trial championships. So they had three goes trying to get into the Olympic games, which is more than was ever done before. I don’t know what specific criticism there is of the encouragement of women’s racing.
SS: I think people feel that generally, less women’s teams are being sent abroad to races. I don’t know if you feel that with their lower numbers, there should be less of a spend in that given area….
PJ: No, the spend is up. The spend is up and the amount of teams that go to races…. I mean the women’s commission would decide the teams. There is also a woman going to Okinawa, for the first time ever, we have sent a woman out there so…. There also comes a time too…people are authors of their own destiny. There also have been a number of women going away to track taster sessions in Manchester. A number of people went away. Now that is peoples’ own initiative – we will never be the sole arbiter of what teams go away. We may have to look in the future…if you just take the road, for instance, we may have to look in the future of not sending teams to traditional races because it doesn’t fit in with our plan. It is something that we could have to look at very hard and make some radical changes, because the people we need to look at are…..not for this Olympiad, that is already sorted, the eight people are named and it is highly likely that the people who will be going to the Olympics will be from that road squad, or in mountainbiking, or track, or whatever. That is set in stone. But the one we have to be looking for is the next one, Bejing and beyond.
SS: There was some criticism during the year with regard to team selections, in that people felt there was a lack of transparency. The junior squad is one which really springs to mind. I got an email from Martin O’Loughlin and it seems to be setting out structures for next season and beyond, whereby people will see exactly what will entitle them to get onto teams. Do you think that this is an area that has to be addressed in the future?
PJ: Well, I suppose if you look at what happened this year with regard to selection…. There was some criticism of the decision to only send three under 23’s when there were five places available. I think that the people who made that decision decided that we had three people who had a very strong chance of doing well in the race and it subsequently turned out they did. They only finished nine seconds down on the winner. In retrospect that was the right decision. I mean, it is not anybody’s divine right to go to world championships to get experience or anything like that… At world championships and Olympic games, what it is is a very, very mercenary, heavy-duty end of the sport and we have to realise that. There may come a time in the future when we don’t send anybody to races if we have nobody who can benefit from that race. I mean, if they can benefit from that race or if they can get a high placing, then we have to look at it. But you can also demoralise people.
We have the Team Ireland place in Belgium where riders can be introduced in a controlled environment to continental racing, as hard as they want it to be. People have gone over there and really enjoyed it and that has worked well. But going back to your point about the actual selection criteria and process….if you take the time trial, we put performance bands in and said the winners would go. Some people thought that wasn’t the right way to do it, there was some criticism of that. I thought it was precisely the right way to do it because was there any point in sending somebody to the men’s world time trial championships who is only able to average forty kilometres an hour? There isn’t. Like, David McCann came within thirty-four seconds of an Olympic place, which is very, very close. I think that procedure is mercenary and tough, but the worlds are mercenary and tough.
SS: Some of the concern was the four junior places and how they were determined. Now whether or not there was – and Stuart has gone on record saying that there was no undue influence with regards to selection – but the thing is that it is all about perception. Is it therefore important to have a selection process set out beforehand, whereby people can see why a person is on a team?
PJ: Well, I think the results speak for themselves this year in most cases. There will always be controversy, Shane, when selections are being made. I remember the last big controversy was over the Olympic team manager, for God’s sake. That was a huge controversy, over the guy who was actually bringing the team to Sydney. That was one of the situations that I couldn’t fathom. Personally I don’t have anything to do with selection and I won’t have anything to do with it, but what I will do is absolutely support the selectors because they are the people who have been appointed to do the job. If you start second-guessing those people, what chance do we have?
I mean, there was a huge controversy last year over the under 23 selections for Zolder. I remember that as well. So there will always be controversy way down the line. Yeah, you are right, there should be selection criteria. I know that in mountainbiking we are facing the situation next year where two women look likely to be vying for a possible place for one person. I know that the mountainbike commission have designed a set of criteria for that particular purpose. There will also be criteria published for Olympic selection next year. They are in the process of doing that. I don’t know what they are because I am not directly involved in that. There are criteria there, on our website, but maybe they are not comprehensive enough.