Dowling: I tried to avoid road cycling, I didn’t believe in it
EVEN in a season derailed by illness and injury Mark Dowling can’t hide his enthusiasm when the talk turns to the “lawless”’ nature of the Rás Tailteann.
The son of nine-time Irish boxing champion Mick only decided to throw his hat in the ring for this year’s race last week after coming out the other side of eight months of illness and injury.
The prospects looked so bleak he didn’t join a team for 2018, but after picking his season up off the canvas in the last month, he will line up at the start in Drogheda with a five-man Team Leinster on Sunday.
“Some people might write me off after only doing four weeks of training, I’m not my usual self but there’s definitely something there and I definitely think I could pull something off,” says the 58kg pocket rocket ahead of his 10th Rás.
Encouraged by his showing at Sunday’s Shay Elliott Memorial, Dowling is eyeing up the mountainous stages in the second half of the week as his chance to land a few blows in the nine-day race that’s known for its unpredictability.
“It’s just chaotic, the foreign teams abide by the unspoken rules of cycling, plus when they come here they’ve only got five-man teams, which makes it very hard to control and then you’ve got maybe 100 county riders who will just throw those rules out the window,” the 31-year-old says, speaking at an event to unveil Europcar as the Rás’ official partner.
“They’re there to race themselves as well as the pros. They’re looking for the stage, trying to win the county riders’ prize, which is highly sought after in Irish cycling.
“The big pro teams don’t really understand this. They’re not expecting 15 guys from Cork and Kerry to just come thundering around them. And then when they catch them, another group goes. So it’s a completely lawless race.”
With his father steeped in Irish boxing and his mother Emily an accomplished distance runner, the Dowling kids were brought up with sport as their native tongue.
Mark (right) never had any interest in following his father between the ropes and admits he avoided road racing for a long time, given the clouds that hung over the sport.
“I still don’t really believe a lot of what I’m watching,” he admits. Triathlon was the first discipline to draw Dowling in as he chased the Olympic dream, inspired by his parents’ achievements.
“I thought it was a cleaner sport,” he says, but injuries and a talent transfer programme after the Beijing Games saw him concentrate on the bike with the help of Cycling Ireland. “I produced good numbers and they really wanted to get hold of me but they told me I was just too small for track.
“I told them I had no real interest in racing on the road, I said I don’t believe in the road because of everything that had just gone on. I thought to be at that level it was just dope, dope, dope.
“For me I couldn’t do that. It’s not my name to ruin, it’s my family’s name that they have spent years trying to build. So I figured that I would try to avoid the road cycling and stick with track cycling.
“Obviously, they weren’t having any of it,” he says. “So they pushed me into the road cycling. I went in there happy to never expect to win big races... but I was willing to push myself to the absolute maximum.”
And that has been enough to allow him travel the world and continue to live his life through sport. There’s no feeling of being cheated by the sins of others. His only regret will be if he gets through next week without throwing a few punches.