Navan RC members gearing up for testing cyclocross challenge

Those looking to make a serious impact in the Irish Cyclocross Championships will have been busy over the festive season putting the finishing touches to their preparations for a competition that is by any yardstick a gruelling test of physical and mental strength.

The championships take place on a course close to the the city of Armagh on Saturday and Sunday, 8th and 9th January and among those taking part will be contingent of cyclists from Navan Road Club including Sean Nolan who will be aiming to win the senior men's title.

Also looking to make a impact in the championships will be Joseph Mullen who is regarded as a strong medal prospect in the boys u-16 category. Only a few weeks ago Mullen showed his class when he won the Leinster title in his age group.

Other Navan RC cyclists heading to Armach include Mya Doocey, Zoe Shakespeare, Killian Fox, Tim Cronin (all u-16 level) while in the u-18 category Emma Smith and Aoife Mooney will also represent the Navan club.

Nolan, a student at Maynooth University, will go into the championships one of only a handful of cyclists harbouring realistic hopes of emerging with the senior title. On the 12th December he won senior Leinster title in Ballymascanlon, Dundalk. It wasn't just that he won that day it was the way he did it with a clear advantage over the second place finisher.

Nolan , of course, comes from a family with a rich cycling tradition. His father John, who enjoyed considerable success as a road racer while uncle PJ is a former president of Cycling Ireland and commentated on the sport for RTE at various Olympic Games.

In 2019 Sean Nolan, then just 17 and a student at St Patrick's CS, Navan, was selected to represent Ireland at the World Cyclocross Championships in Denmark.

Sean Nolan showed an early talent for cycling winning the u-14 Irish Road title and he also took silver in the u-16 grade at national level. The fact that he has gone on to carve out a career in the demandng cyclocrossis discipline is all the more remarkable in that a few years ago he was diagnosed by a Meath doctor as suffering from asthma.

He has subsequently learned to manage the condition and participate in the highly demanding sport that involves participants cycling over various kinds of obstacles, with parts of the track often composed of churned-up mud.

Now part of the EvoPro cycling team, Nolan spent the Christmas holidays in Belgium taking part in cyclocross events there.

"They are just fanatical about cyclocross in countries like Belgium, where you could have get 15,000 at events pre-pandemic," adds John Nolan.

Cyclocross, adds Nolan, is proving just as popular for girls as boys. "There are as many girls involved in cyclocross racing as boys, not just in the club but overall in the sport. Cyclocross is a very social sport, youngsters are not out in the middle of nowhere, they are always in small parks and the races, in cycling terms, are relatively short, they are only an half-an-hour long. At senior level they are an hour long and very intense but certainly cyclocross is gaining in popularity in general."