Pedal power in north Cork
more formal clubs with competitive cycling as the main goal. Cork is front and centre when it comes to successful cycling clubs with the north of the county proudly boasting one of the best areas of them all.
O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Cycling Club is one example of the most successful Cycling Clubs in Ireland with more honours and medals garnered in the last 25 years than many of the other clubs in the land combined.
O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Cycling Club is just finishing its silver an- niversary year with the club only recently completing its hosting of the All Ireland Youths championships. There were just over 120 honours on offer and unbelievably the Kanturk team managed to claim 60 of the prizes on offer. Over 250 cyclists took to the track in Kanturk in this year’s All Irelands which was the fifth time the Duhallow clubs held the event in its quarter of a century on the scene. The club has seen its numbers grow in recent times which is par for the course in Irish Cycling as all clubs seem to be attracting more and more members. The club has also managed to pick up eight All Ireland underage track honours at the national track at Sundrive Road in Dublin. Kanturk also managed to take four medals in the over 60’s grade with so many Munster and County titles in recent years that it would be difficult to tally them all up. O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk Cycling Club came into being back in 1991 where they managed to take two All-Ireland bronze medals in year one. Year two saw the club take a much more impressive tally of 28 medals however year three, 1993, saw another huge jump in national success as 62, or half of all the on offer, went the way of the talented cyclists of Kanturk. This hugely impressive level of success continued on for a couple of subsequent years as the club and its highly competitive youngsters continued to reap the rewards that their undoubted talent and their unprecedented levels of dedication deserved.
The club is open to cyclists of all ages with members from the ages of 11 to 65 catered for in a very professional manner.
The senior season runs from February to September each year while the Youth section get a little more time to get into shape after the new year as their season starts in April, running to August each year.
All the early success has seen the club survive and flourish through the hard, recessionary times with numbers continuing to rise. The club now has over 75 competitive members in its ranks with another large group of cyclists taking part in the weekly group cycles.
Kanturk is blessed with several top class sporting clubs which are all well capable of holding their own on a local, provincial and even national stage with Kanturk’s Rugby, GAA, Boxing and Golf Clubs all playing a major part in the sporting life of North Cork however none of those could ever hope to reign as impressively over their sport as the lads and lassies at O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk’s Cycling Club do over theirs.