No bum deal as charity cyclists raise €29,000

As the Tour de France winds its way through northwestern France today, Kevin Nowlan, the chief executive of Hibernia REIT, will be watching from afar, possibly while holding his backside.

Nowlan, a former Nama official and one-time Ireland rugby international, led a team of eight enthusiastic amateurs a few weeks ago on a tough 640km, four-day charity cycle from Malin Head to Mizen Head. They handed over a nice cheque for €29,000 this week to Liberty Saints, a Dublin inner city rugby team.

“It’s safe to say that a large cushion was needed on my office chair the following Monday [after the cycle],” Nowlan told me. “I don’t know how those guys in the Tour de France do it . . .”

With Nowlan’s sporting heritage, I’m sure the gruelling cycle was no real bother to him, even if Hibernia’s management meetings were standing affairs for a few days afterwards.

The cycling team's long list of sponsors – too long to print – included law firms Eversheds and A&L Goodbody, and the other Goodbody, the stockbrokers.

They’re a sporty lot over at Hibernia, by the way. Nowlan’s chief financial officer, Tom Edwards-Moss, who also completed the cycle, is a former Cambridge rower.

Here’s how his team president described him in the British press in 2001 ahead of the annual race against Oxford: “[Tom is] a nutter, inexperienced but conscious of that and a quick learner. Loves to race and pull hard.”

Great attributes for a cyclist, too, one assumes.