Heres a couple of photos I took ( apparently ) back in the 1990 courtesy of my best buddy Dave Gill
I can see the side of Gerry mac and the Healy bros, Doris is probably in there and Shane Sutton and that might even be batster with the hair and the red jacket in the middle !
I forget how long i'm at this sometimes. Thats a nice reminder..I was at it a good while before i took those photos with a Nikon EM as i recall, i still have her up in the attic along wih hundreds of slides and other photos..some are way too embarrassing !!
where we fighting..i think i've had a row at every AGM except the one before last.
What people don't realise is that I've been here since right at the start.
I was on the first Offroad Commission and most of them afterwards.
I was on all that sent Robin to the Olympics.
I haven't been on one since the High Performance took over the sending away of Riders and the Elite development.
2 years ago there was 18 of us at the Offroad Commission AGM, we didn't have enough for a legal Commission meeting or a concensus or whatever its called.
I've stood up and shouted abuse at people at CI AGMs..
I've also sold out to Commissions and I've fought bitterly with them.
I bullied people off some of them and cajoled some others on to them.
And I have lost friends several times because of The Commission.
Unfortunately or Fortunately i have been a fixture in Irish Mountainbiking right since the beginning.
I ran the Mountainbike Nationals in 1992 ( there was no DH then !!) and I got £8000 off Grundig.
I have no idea what that is in new money..I think it was a years wages for me !!
And I was asked to run it by the Federation of Irish Cyclists ( Cycling Ireland )
Some of you think you are the first to think of things and are deadly..
hahahaha..
do you know how many times mistakes have been repeated ?
XC is the poor Cousin now, but its not that long since it was the the other way round.
and it will swing back again. Bet on it.
i will write a book one day, but for the moment..i'm going to be in a Documentary.
Think i have video of the 1993 Cycling/Offroad Agm somewhere(starring Richie and Peter Purfield)... no VHS player though
I'll give you a loan of a good VHS player if you want one....deadly old photos, everything was much more colorful back then wasn't it, do you miss the rigid forks at all...I was big into hill walking back then, maybe 89 more so, if we ever saw lads on bikes we'd be thinking, "look at these mad *******s, jaysuz".
