Pedalling his way to the top of demanding sport

ONE of the most prominent cyclists on the Irish scene over the past year has been Ballinakill teenager Thomas Fallon. Apart from winning the Connacht junior road race, time trial and hill climb championships, he has also featured prominently on the Irish team that competed at the European Juniors last Summer.

With cycling undergoing a renaissance in Ireland at present, there appears to be a plethora of aspiring juniors with the potential of making the step-up to the elite grade over the coming years. And one of those is Fallon.

This year alone, the reigning Connacht champion has claimed some notable victories around the country, winning the A3 grade in the Broadford Cycling Pursuits Cup, the Newbridge GP and the Barrow Wheelers GP while also featuring prominently in a myriad of other events.

Fallon also secured a magnificent opening stage win at the Charleville Park Hotel Two-Day in early September. Unfortunately, without the support of a team, the Mercy College Woodford Leaving Cert. student was unable to retain the yellow jersey as another junior rider, Dylan Foley – backed by a team of riders – went on to win the overall event.

Fallon’s impressive run of placings has seen him rise to the fore of Irish junior cycling and he is now as much a real prospect for the future as Ryan Mullen – the Planet X cyclist who, this Summer, secured a silver medal at the European Time Trial Championships in Holland before finishing a creditable ninth at the World Championships.

For his part, Fallon, as a first-year junior, proved his mettle on the international stage when finishing alongside Mullen in the road race discipline of the Europeans. It was a solid showing for the teenager, who was also first reserve on the Irish team for the Worlds, building on a number of other races he had taken part in on the Continent in the run-in to the championships.

This included a strong display at the demanding UCI 2.1 Neidersachen Rundfarth event in Germany. While other riders were being dropped – some failing to qualify for the next stage in the multi-event – Fallon showed he could mix it with the very best by riding brilliantly to cover the breaks and keep Mullen, the best placed Irish rider, in contention.

He backed this up with a 15th placed finish at an event at the Ronde Van Zundurt before then producing another solid performance with team-mates Cormac Clarke, Mullen and Jack Sadler at the Europeans.

No doubt, rubbing shoulders with some of the top juniors in the world is a far cry from Fallon’s days of those leisure spins as a 10-year-old boy with his father Joe, who, he says, has cultivated this love of cycling.

“When he was at it, we thought he was big into it . . . until we realised what big into it was!” laughs Fallon. “I don’t think he (father) ever raced really; it was all leisure spins. I started to go out with him when I was about 10 and it just took off from there.”

In the ensuing years, he made the step up to youth racing and in his first competitive year Fallon – riding with Wolftrap Cycling Club in Birr, which was the nearest available outlet to him – won the U-16 Leinster Youth title and crowned a remarkable year by taking second overall in the U-15 National Youth Championships in Coalisland, Co. Tyrone in 2010.

His achievement secured his place on the Irish 2020 Talent Team, a Cycling Ireland initiative that aims to nurture young talent over the next eight years with the ultimate goal of preparing them to participate in the 2020 Olympic Games.

In July of last year, he formed part of an Irish U-16 team at the Mayo Youth tour, an international two-day classic, and last December the Kylebrack teenager was named Offaly Cycling Sports Person of the Year due to his association with the Wolftrap club.

However, with Seven Springs Cycling founded and established, Fallon, the eldest of three children, made the move earlier this year to the Loughrea-based club – so allowing him to compete and claim the title of junior champion in his own province.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.