TONY GRIFFIN Former All-Star inter-county hurler, whose foundation has raised more than €1m for cancer research, writes EOIN BUTLER
In 2004, you left Ireland to study in Canada.I spent four years studying human kinetics in Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. This involved a lot of commuting, leaving on a Thursday night and returning on a Monday morning after playing a National League or club game in Ireland. This was every third or fourth week. It wasn't easy.
How did you find anyone to train with in Halifax, Nova Scotia?I was lucky. I had a great roommate, a Canadian guy called Ben Whidden. We'd go out to an old baseball field. I gave him a hurl and his job was to hit me as hard as he could below the neck. I was trying to recreate the physical battle of hurling.
Wait, you gave your roommate a stick and asked him to chase you around a field. People must have thought you were insane?Probably, but then I showed them some footage of hurling matches. They were amazed. They'd see me playing in front of 80,000 people and think I must be rich.
Your father passed away from cancer while you were in Canada.Yeah, like a lot of Irish men he'd worked in the tunnels in London, handling asbestos. He was a very fit man, but in early 2005 he started to lose weight. In October, I got word I'd better come home quickly. He rallied and I thought I'd see him again at Christmas but unfortunately that wasn't to be.
When did you decide you wanted to help the fight against cancer?About a fortnight or so after my dad's funeral. I had an aunt and uncle die of cancer around the same time. I stayed in Ireland for the 2006 season and won an All-Star. When I returned to university in autumn, I hit upon the idea of cycling across Canada. When Lance Armstrong got involved, it snowballed. We soon had 250 volunteers.
Who were they?All walks of life. There was a lady called Janice Landry, who would be the Canadian equivalent of newsreader Anne Doyle. She gave me some media training and made sure our story was carried on every station from Vancouver to Halifax.
You cycled 7,000km. That's like doing the Tour de France twice, back to back.Yes, except Canada is so wild and remote. I came around a corner one day and there was a black bear on the side of the road. I knew she could outrun and kill me if she wanted to. So we just stood and stared at each other and she ambled back into the forest. I met several bears and a moose, but the biggest danger was drivers.
Because they weren't used to meeting cyclists?You're in the middle of nowhere so they might try to have a bit of fun and run you off the road. But that was only a minority, the majority were very kind.
There was a story cut from the book, I hear, about someone you met in Winnipeg. Who told you about that?We met a lady who offered to give us dinner in her house. She had to get ready for work then so we figured we'd better leave. But she insisted we stay and finish our dinners. When she arrived out again she was dressed to the nines in leather, you know? So I said, 'What do you work at?' She says, 'I'm a stripper' – as casually as if she was going to work in the local Esso garage. 'So lads, you can let yourselves out.' And off she went.
The following year you cycled from Halifax to Texas. You spent some time with Lance Armstrong there, he's also written the foreword to your book. Yes, I cycled with him, visited his house, did some promotional work with him and got to know him a bit. He's just a relaxed, witty, almost goofy kind of guy. People ask me, well, did he dope? I don't know. But I know the man, the friend that supported us every way he could. So I take him at his word.
After each cycle you went straight on and played in that year's hurling championship.I know, I was a crazy person. I tried, but my body had changed so much, I ended up tearing both my hamstrings. I spent most of 2008 and 2009 trying to feel like a hurler again. It's only now my body is starting to go back to what it was. This is what the book is about. It's about the cycle. It's about my dad. It's about overcoming grief, overcoming doubt and charting a course to what you want to do in life.
Tony Griffin's autobiography Screaming at the Sky(Transworld Ireland, £11.69) is out now
