Mark Rohan in front of The Bike Shed, the Algarve bike shop he manages.
Carlton Reid
Mark Rohan had his life mapped out. He was earning good money as an electrician, he was playing county GAA football for the Westmeath under-21s, and he had a cute girlfriend. The 6-ft-tall 20-year old wasn’t the most skilful Gaelic footballer, but he was strong—nickname: The Bull—and he was tenacious.
His strength and tenacity would be tested in November 2001 after what should have been a ten-minute motorbike journey back home to Ballinahown from his girlfriend’s house in Athlone. He knew the road backwards and, to this day, he doesn’t know how he crashed his 400cc Honda Bros motorbike into a tree.
“I ended up breaking four bones in my back, my breastbone, my ribs, my teeth; punctured my lung and tore my aorta,” Rohan tells me.
“I was very lucky to survive.”
His T-2 to T-5 vertebrae were crushed, a life-changing spinal injury.
We’re talking in the Bike Shed, a cycle hire centre the 38-year-old runs on The Campus, a new and upscale sports complex on the Quinta do Lago golf resort close to Faro airport on Portugal’s Algarve coast.
“I’m the mechanic; I also do some coaching. We’re a one-stop shop for cycling enthusiasts who want to enjoy the Algarve.
“We hire out road bikes, gravel bikes, mountain bikes. Our road bikes are Holdsworth Super Professional’s. It’s hilly around here, so the bikes are fitted with 11-32 cassettes.”
Rohan climbs the Serra de Monchique, a small mountain range covered by pine and eucalyptus trees, but he does so with his arms. He rides a low-to-the-ground Invercare handcycle.
“On the flat, I can keep up with a good club rider; uphill it’s a different story.”
Then, with a smile: “Downhill, it’s an absolute rocket.”
Mark Rohan leading out a group of young cyclists on resort roads.
Carlton Reid
Rohan is a double Paralympic champion.
“[The London 2012 Olympic Games] went well for me,” he says, matter of factly.
He won golds in the 16-km time trial and the 48-km road race. (Rohan competed in the H1 para-cycling class.)
Now retired from professional sport, he lives full-time in the Algarve.
“I love living in Portugal—the weather is perfect. I know the sun will be shining. It makes life more comfortable.”
Some background.
“I was playing club and county [Gaelic] football, and I was working as an electrician on overhead power lines. On November 4, 2001, I crashed my motorcycle—it went down the road and looked like it was parked. For two hours there were cars passing by. I was getting very cold.
“Eventually, one guy stopped—he worked for the Farm Relief Service. He was passing by to get to Elphin for the month’s mind [requiem mass] for his father. He never usually drove along this road—that’s how random life can be. He saw the bike and thought he’d get out and have a look in the ditch to make sure there was no-one in there.
“He knew it didn’t look right. Jim Dockery is his name. He found me. If he hadn’t found me when he did I wouldn’t have survived.
“I was taken to the Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore, for a couple of hours and then they transferred me to the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Dublin’s Mater hospital where I spent the next two months.”
Rohan was later transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire.
“It was there that I came to terms with everything, and when I got back into some form of normality.”
Normality included getting back into sport.
“As part of rehab, I played table tennis, archery, and wheelchair basketball.”
Rohan’s desire to win shone out. He played wheelchair basketball for Ireland and, as part of cross-training, he took up paracycling.
“I did it a couple of times a week at first and loved it.
“Before my crash, I used to ride a bicycle to training, used to ride a bike to milk the cows [on his grandfather’s farm], used to ride three miles to the local football team. We used to ride to the river to go swimming and fishing. But I’d never done performance training on a bike.
“I loved getting back into it and pushing myself to the limit. If you do well [at sport] you get a grant, and the chance to go from part-time [athlete] to full-time [athlete.]
“At the time there was only really two of us handcycling in Ireland, so they took both of us to the world championships [in Milan in 2009].
“This was such an eye-opener. I was like an amateur club rider turning up at the world championships. It was a steep learning curve. I had gear ratios of 11-36, and I pumped up the tire too hard. The mechanic had said don’t pump up the tire so hard.
“I said I need the tires as hard as possible so I could go fast. The tire blew up before we started. The only change [of wheel] we had was an 11-25 so my arms nearly fell off going around that race track.”
Rohan finished last, but the spark had been lit.
“I really loved the buzz.”
Mark Rohan with a young rider from a local cycling club sponsored by The Bike Shed.
Carlton Reid
The 2010 season opener was held in Dubai. Rohan hung behind Wolfgang Shattauer, hoping to be dragged to the finish. Instead, in the closing meters, he outpaced the Austrian World Champion, winning Ireland’s first ever paracycling medal.
(Shattauer would later get bronzes in the London 2012 races won by Rohan.)
Later the same year, in Canada, Rohan proved that his victory hadn’t been a fluke—he won a world championship medal.
In 2011, Rohan won both the time-trial and the road race at the World Championships in Denmark. Team Sky signed him for a pre-Olympics promotional campaign.
As a full-time athlete, his life started to revolve around competitions and training camps.
“I did the usual thing with Irish Cycling—we went to Mallorca. But there was too much cycling for me. Cycling. Cycling. Cycling. Every 10 to 15 minutes you see cyclists. I like to switch off from cycling when I’m not cycling. I prefer quieter places, where you can go for an hour without even seeing a car.
“The Irish Paralympic team later brought me to the Algarve on a two-week training camp. I loved it. I loved the people. I loved the pace of life. I loved the training facilities.
“Every January, I would pack the car with all my nutrition, the turbo[trainer]—not that I ever needed it here—and I would drive down here and stay for four months. I would do all of my winter base [training] down here [in the Algarve].
“Then I would drive through Europe and do the European Cups, preparing for the World Championships. I did that for six or seven years.
“[After I retired] I did an MBA in sports management with Real Madrid. Loved it. I had an internship at San Jose University, an internship with Wembley Stadium, but then I thought I want to live where the sun is shining.
“I kept my eye on a small orange farm in the countryside [close to here]. I planned to open a cycling and hiking retreat, with organic food to teach people how food affects your performance and your mood.
“Then this job [at The Campus] came up so I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn, and stay within the business [of cycling].”
The Bike Shed, along with the rest of facilities at The Campus—including all-weather soccer pitches, tennis courts, an outdoor pool, and a world-class gym—opened in November 2017.
“I’ve been here from the start, so it’s like something I’ve created. I don’t mind staying late; I don’t mind working weekends. When you come from a sporting background, you always want to succeed, and that’s the same for business.”
Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, chairman of Digicel Group. Photographer: Jason Alden.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
The 700-hectare Quinta do Lago resort is 45-years-old. It boasts three golf courses and multi-million-dollar villas facing the ocean. It has been owned by billionaire Irish telecoms and media entrepreneur Denis O’Brien since 1998.
O’Brien plays golf, but says Rohan, he also cycles.
“We’ve had him out cycling. Denis does a couple of sportive back home—one for the Peter McVerry trust, a Dublin homeless foundation. And he supports the Ring of Kerry Charity Cycle Ride.
“He comes out here and cycles to train for those.”
Golf is in decline globally (although Quinta do Lago reportedly had its best-ever year last year) and The Campus was added to widen the resort’s appeal.
“We’re becoming more of an-round family resort,” says Rohan.
“We want to offer up 28 different sports. So, a guy might cycle with us, his wife might do a tennis program, and his kids might do a dancing camp.”
As well as Premiership soccer teams—such as Burnley—The Campus is also attracting triathlon and cycling teams.
“The Scottish Triathlon team, and the British Paralympic [cycling] team have been out here. Quickstep was here for two weeks as part of an early season training camp.”
Mark Rohan organizing an event at The Bike Shed, Portugal.
Carlton Reid
Rohan enjoys mixing it with the sports stars attracted to Quinta—Rio Ferdinand runs a football camp in the resort, and Judy Murray leads a tennis camp—but it’s the guaranteed sunshine and the quality riding on quiet roads among the hills nearby that fires him up.
“The most important thing for somebody with mobility issues is to stay fit and healthy—it increases your independence. If I put weight on I won’t be able to push up hills, I won’t be able to transfer as easily into and out of cars. For me, it’s essential to stay fit and strong.
He laughs: “It also means your wheelchair can be narrower so you can get into the smaller toilet cubicles.”
The Bull from Ballinagown is adamant: “Cycling has improved my life so much.”
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Listen to this interview with Mark Rohan on The Spokesmen podcast.
