A ride through the Wicklow mountains looking for the last prime

Before the rain came down and dampened the roads again this past week has been prime weather for cycling. Some days you could go out with no distance or route in mind and end up getting lost in the appreciation for the things that pass quickly by.

After the first proper climb up the old Military Road, which runs the 58km from Rathfarnham in Dublin to Aughavannagh in Wicklow, the city is left behind in silent miniature and everything changes. After the Featherbeds and the sprinklings of golden-fleeced gorse that skirt the edges of Glencree everything changes again, when the road ramps up sharply, just before plateauing out in near total desolation towards the Sally Gap.

Just here to the left of the road, mostly hidden behind the heather and long grass, is a small granite boulder with the inscription: Jim Stynes, Dublin GAA & Melbourne AFL champion, 1966 – 2012.

You’ve passed it many times and always think about the incredible career Stynes enjoyed, his 244 consecutive games for Melbourne Football Club, between 1987 and 1998, still an AFL record (which only ended after he broke his hand), and still the first and only non-Australian to win the Brownlow Medal, in 1991.

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In 2012 Stynes died from cancer, which began as a small lump on his back, and his ashes were later spread from this exact spot, out over Upper and Lower Lough Bray. For the first time it strikes you he was 45-years-old, in his prime, the same age as you are now.

The stillness of the day invites the road past the source of the River Liffey and over the roof of Wicklow and into Laragh. That leaves you within touching distance of the climb over to Glenmalure, staying on the Military Road, and again the day tempts it. You haven’t ridden up there in a while and knowing what’s coming up this Sunday feel like making the salute to Shay Elliott.

Although born in Dublin, Elliott is most associated with this part of Wicklow, one of his favourite training routes being this climb up between Cullentragh and Kirikee mountains, then down into Drumgoff, in the heart of Glenmalure. He’d often ride over it back and forth in quick succession, in all weather.

Just here on the left, near its 381m peak, is another granite boulder with the inscription: In Memory of Shay Elliott, International Racing Cyclist, erected by his family and friends, Bray Wheelers Club, 1971.

That was the year he died, aged only 36, the first and then only Irish cyclist to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, in 1963, before 20 years later Sean Kelly became the second. Elliott single-handedly blazed the trail for Irish professional cyclists, breaking down a series of barriers – cultural and physical – to make it into the peloton, the French sporting press describing him as “soaked with class”.

Although he retired early, in 1967, he was the first English speaking rider to wear the leader’s jersey in all three major tours – the Giro (1960), the Vuelta (1962), and the Tour itself (1963).

He started up a panel-beating business in Dublin before soon, inevitably, he missed cycling, the lure of riding the 1970 World Championships in Leicester proving irresistible. Only having sold his stories of sabotage and of cycling’s drug-taking to the People newspaper, his whistleblowing made him an outcast from the sport he once charmed.

On May 7th, 1971, two weeks after his father’s funeral, Elliott was found dead in the small apartment above his business on Prince’s Street, a gunshot wound to the chest fatally rupturing his heart and liver. The coroner’s report deemed it “self-enacted”, and while most of his friends claim it was a tragic accident, what is certain is that Elliott was still in his prime.

This Sunday, the 60th Shay Elliott Memorial Race (formerly the Route Chill Mhantáin), also takes in the climb at Glenmalure, after some 116km of riding, and about 30km before the summit finish on the road parallel to Djouce. It’s one of the harder days of the Cycling Ireland National Road Series but offers the chance to join a distinguished list of winners, including Kelly himself, who won here in 1974 and 1975. Not one of the riders on Sunday will fail to appreciate that.

The quickest way back from Glenmalure to Glencree is the old high road out of Roundwood, then back up the side of Crone Wood, rejoining the Military Road at Aurora.

Just here, this time on the right of the road, is a smaller granite boulder, half-carved, with the inscription: Liam Horner, Olympic Cyclist, “the last prime.”

Horner is not nearly as celebrated as either Stynes or Elliott but it’s a worthy monument nonetheless to the rider who in 1967, while still working as a carpenter, became the first amateur to win a major race outside of Ireland with his victory in the Manx International, on the Isle of Mann.

He had ambitions of following in Elliott’s tracks, using these same Wicklow roads as his training base, out and back from his home in Monkstown. Horner never rode any of major tour yet racked up a stack of wins, including the Irish road race title in 1971, plus the Tour of Ireland the following year, and riding in both the 1968 and 1972 Olympics.

Horner also died in tragic circumstances, in 2003, following an accident at work. He was renowned for attacking every prime (from the French word “gift”), those intermediate sprints within a race, hence the inscription “the last prime”, but you ride away wondering if it might mean something else.