Mark Downey has the medals to remind him of his recent world cup wins, but it’s the reaction he got when he arrived back in County Down that really rammed home his success.
The Dromore man came home last week from a sweep around the UCI World Cup events in the Netherlands, Columbia and America with gold around his neck and dreams of victory at next month’s Track Cycling World Championships in Hong Kong.
Naturally, his cycling-crazy family were delighted to see him and it was one little change at home that made him realise all that he had achieved.
“They’ve been overly nice to me since I got home. I noticed that I don’t have to do my dishes since I’ve been home this time, which is a major change. That’s great motivation to keep doing well!” laughed the affable 20-year-old.
Downey won gold in the individual points race, a 40k blast around the 250m track with points for sprints every ten laps, and with Felix English in the Madison, a non-stop 50k pairs race which sees cyclists catapult their team mates forward to gain momentum.
The Madison will be added to the list of events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and both Downey and English very much have that in his mind.
He wants to ride Grand Tours in the future too, but for the time being Hong Kong between April 12 and 16 is his main focus.
Downey was never going to avoid the bike, given his upbringing. His father Seamus rode alongside Paul Kimmage at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and his brother Sean was on the books of the Irish An Post Chain Reaction team in Belgium for a few years. The family business is a bike shop.
“I grew up on a tandem, well first on one of those seats on the back of the bike, and then when I was old enough to pedal on to the tandem with my father,” he explains.
“We’d be cycling along and I’d unclip my feet and rest them up on the top tube. Dad would be slogging up a hill on his own, shouting back to me ‘are you still cycling?’ and I’d tell him I was!
“I remember my first race was a time trial on a tandem with my father - it was a ten mile time trial and it must’ve taken us about an hour, but for me it was like winning the world championships!" he laughed.
“I played a bit of football with Dromore, I swam with Banbridge. When I was younger I was into a bit of everything. I was always outside, never inside playing the PlayStation - I was out racing the neighbours on the road, or kicking a ball or something.
“Cycling wasn’t a decision I took really. I was doing athletics in the winter until my second year Under-16, but I suppose it’s always what I wanted to do. We have the shop and Sean was full-time - I was going to watch him in races like the Tour of Ireland and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
His sisters Olivia, Catherine and Pauline, Mark is the youngest of the five, were netballers and swimmers rather than cyclists, and their mother Margaret was always on hand to offer her support when required.
“They never took to the cycling, probably because we had their head wrecked talking about it at home - they’d had enough of it!” he joked.
Downey has been based in Majorca with Cycling Ireland for most of this year, when he wasn't winning medals around the globe, though this weekend he’ll be taking part in his first race for his French road-racing team, CC Etupes.
Sitting in the airport reflecting on what's happened over the passed 2 months. I'm excited to see where 2017 takes me. #hardworkpaysoff pic.twitter.com/W74QU7rgoC
— Mark Downey (@MarkDowney03) March 1, 2017
Cycling is all he ever wanted to do, though he admits that he has been surprised by his recent successes.
“To be honest, I think my coach David (Muntaner) was the only one who saw it coming. I didn’t see it and my family didn’t see it,” he said.
“If you work hard enough things sometimes can fall into place, though I know sometimes you can do the hard work and it doesn’t happen. I couldn’t quite believe it; I was winning a medal every race I went out so people were asking me was the competition just like a local race in Banbridge!”
