Irish national rider buried a day before the Tour of Ireland
- By Steve Frothingham
- Published Aug. 20, 2009
The Irish National Team will begin the Tour of Ireland with one rider missing from the roster. Paul Healion, who won the sixth stage of the FBD Insurance Ras this year, was killed in a car crash Sunday. His funeral was Thursday, the day before the Tour of Ireland kicked off.
There will be a minute of silence for him at the start of stage 1.
“It’s difficult to go to his funeral the day before the race,” said Mark Cassidy of Sean Kelly’s An Post squad.
Healion was 31, and recently married. No others were involved in the single-car crash.
Cycling Ireland performance director Phil Leigh told The Irish Times the accident was devastating.
“We keep thinking it’s a nightmare and that we’re going to wake up but that’s obviously not the case,” Leigh told the paper. “It’s an awful time for everybody in cycling and just tragic for Paul’s wife (Ann) and family. Paul was very much in our plans for the next Olympics. He was an extremely strong rider with a super turn of pace. We’d had a training camp for the Tour of Ireland recently and he was at the top of his game.”
Philip Deignan (Cervélo TestTeam) hails from Donegal in the Northwest part of the country, and is among the Irish riders eager to honor Healion’s memory with a win.
Last year’s winner, Marco Pinotti of Columbia-HTC, said the race will be more difficult this year.
“It will be more difficult to win this year, because the competition is higher,” Pinotti said. “And with the presence of big stars, even the Italian media are following the race this year.”
Steve Frothingham
VeloNews.com editor Steve Frothingham joined the gang in bike-crazy Boulder in early 2008. He is the former executive editor of the trade magazine Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. He also was a reporter and editor for The Associated Press, where he covered three presidential primaries in politics-crazy New Hampshire. His racing career began on a BMX track in 1980 and reached its zenith with several miserable road races as a category 2 in the early 90s. He subsequently retreated to cat. 3, where he has had a consistently mediocre (at best) record ever since, in road, mountain bike and cyclocross events. Follow him on Twitter at @steve_froth