Legend

paddy's hill

Mick Murphy, I thought he was dead. What a legend.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1117/6news_av.html?2450454,null,230

72hundred

Holy sh^t.

"I used to drink the blood from the cows neck"

Legend is an over-used term, but that man is truly deserving of it.

Convict

This was on a couple of years back. Won some awards


http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2008/pc/pod-v-230508-42m27s-doconone.mp3

CheGuedara

One of the lads that cycles with me is involved in that installation in Siamsa Tralee. Incredible stories, some of it bordering on madness but interesting - they definitely don't make cyclists like they used to....

RobFowl

Meeting The Iron Man Of Irish Cycling
Feb 24, 2007, 17:48

By Micheal O Muircheartaigh Sunday October 29 2006

Meeting the Iron Man of Irish cycling
I WAS led on a pleasant detour by Caherciveen butcher and golfer Jimmy Curran to meet somebody known as 'The Iron Man', on account of his exploits as a cyclist back in the 1950s. Cycling as a sport was gaining popularity back then, and the annual stage race around Ireland, An Ras Tailteann, now known as the FBD Insurance Ras, was responsible for a great deal of it.

The Christle brothers, especially the late big man Joe, were the principal organisers and their motivation came from a nationalistic fervour and a love of all aspects of Irish culture. They were inspired by the Tour de France and had a vision of developing such a spectacle in Ireland in their time. Joe Christle was a great character and a brilliant organiser and I cannot recall an occasion when we spoke other than in Irish. He was married to a French lady, Mimi Battutt. Years later, I taught Mel Christle, one of Joe and Mimi's three boxing sons, when I was on the teaching staff at O'Connell School in North Richmond St, Dublin.

Joe served a few prison sentences due to his involvement in republican causes, but he remained as Ras Director until 1972. The whole family served cycling well but one of them, Ando, was sadly killed near Tralee following an accident during the Ras of 1954. He had returned from England to help in the running of the race, and was driving a motorbike out of Tralee to watch his brother Colm in the closing stages. The leaders had already crossed the finishing line, but Colm had had a day of puncture problems so he was well behind; concern for him was the reason for Ando's drive out of town, which finished in that fatal accident. Understandably, all members of the Gate Club, which included the Christles, retired from the race.

Those and other thoughts from the past were on my mind as Jimmy Curran and I approached the home of the Iron Man, Mike Murphy, a unique type of champion who hit the headlines in a major way in the course of winning the 1958 Ras. When I entered the house, I was expecting to see mementos from his sporting days, but the opposite was the case. Conventional furnishings were Spartan, in keeping with his lifestyle of the past 60 years: books, magazines, newspapers and an assortment of timber planks took up most of the space and he kindly fixed up a wooden seat for us, which was comfortable. Time did not seem to matter and I felt he was far more anxious to talk about topics other than cycling during our stay. I would naturally have preferred the reverse, considering it was cycling that had made him famous, but I let him speak as he wished and still managed to get a good insight into hiscycling escapades.

He was a man who had left school early and had learned how to read and write from his mother, but he amazed me with his detailed knowledge of the Hapsburg dynasty in Europe and the Royals of Spain and how they had influenced the history of Europe. It was the same when it came to the Papacy; it soon became clear that this semi-mystic had read a lot.

He is conscious of the benefits of a good diet when in training, and maintains that this knowledge helped him in his cycling days: "raw foods are best - meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables, honey - and I always took quantities of cows' blood when I felt it was needed." He told me how he always carried a penknife with him and knew how to extract blood from a cow's vein without causing any damage.

He was anxious to tell me about his circus acting, something that started by accident when he was very young: "My neighbour Joe Burke performed with touring circuses that came this way now and then, and he took me on as his assistant at the age of 12.I was very interested in their training methods, weights and all of that, and before long I made my own gym here in the house."

An incredible number of weights of all sizes, obviously home-made with concrete, were on display along with the iron bars required for lifting and squatting. They certainly played a part in his fairytale rise to the position of champion cyclist of Ireland in 1958 because he was known as a man with phenomenal strength, but he seemed more interested in telling me about history and his circus life before talking about the bike racing: "I learned how to move along upside-down using my feet, going from rung to rung of a ladder suspended above a stage. I could balance objects on my chin. I was a fire-eater. I could walk on my hands and performed those tricks on the streets of London and in other places years later when I needed money. One time, a man in London issued a challenge to race hand-walking from Brighton to London, taking rests every now and then. I volunteered to take him on, but he never showed up."

We eventually got around to talk about cycling. By then, I had spotted a small photograph of a man on a bicycle above the fireplace and I went to inspect it. It was a photo of the Iron Man. I learned later that this, the only visible souvenir, referred to a stage of the famous Ras of 1958 when he confounded the cycling world by winning.

His interest in cycling developed from attending carnivals and sports meets all over Kerry, where prizes were offered to the winners - sometimes in the form of cash. Distance was not a problem, as he explained himself: "I remember leaving here on a common bike one day to cycle the 60 miles to Camp to take part in a cycle race. I won the race and cycled back home again." Sometimes he might not return but stay, set up circus acts, sleep rough and prepare for a meet coming up shortly in another town.

From his circus connections he got the latest information on training techniques, and by 1956, he had decided to try and take on the best in cycling. Training then became more intensive, but due to his day job as a farm labourer, he did a lot of his training on the mountains by night. The final preparation for the 1958 Ras was carried out in a private camp close to Banteer in Cork, where he was working as a labourer. He created another 'gym' in a quiet wooded spot, trained as never before, gave up work, did stunts in Cork City and felt really ready for the Ras.

As usual, the Ras Tailteann began outside the GPO in Dublin and the 1958 race was the longest ever staged - 1,494km over eight gruelling days. "I believed in striking to the front any chance I got and defied others to beat me," was how Mike explained his pre-race plan to me. He was not too concerned about team tactics or other race customs: "I had confidence in myself."

Tom Daly's account of the race is given in his excellent book simply called The Ras, which charts the history of the race from 1953 to 2002.

Stage 1 - Dublin to Wexford: Won by Dan Ahern of Kerry with the unknown Murphy claiming second place.

Stage 2 - Wexford to Kilkenny: The Iron Man disregarded established etiquette, rode solo away from the bunch and arrived in Kilkenny on his own. It was a performance that left the Ras astonished. The race leader's yellow jersey was his. Legend tells that he then rode off that evening wearing the yellow jersey, did a 30-mile training spin, stopped at a stone wall, and with selected stones "did weights" for a hour before drawing blood from a cow and returning to base. It is believed he did the transfusion three times during the Ras.

Stage 3 - Kilkenny to Clonakilty: A remarkable stage, with Murphy well ahead of a scattered field on the climb at Watergrasshill outside Cork. But disaster struck when his bike failed on the run into Glanmire. He was at a stand-still and the field swept by and disappeared from view. Suddenly a farmer appeared at a gap holding on to an ordinary bicycle. This gave Iron Man an idea, and in a jiffy he was on the substitute, leaving astartled farmer behind holding another bike. In time,the team car reached Mike and gave him the spare racer. He chased for 40 miles and caught sight of the bunch close to Clonakilty and was with them at the finishand safely holding onto the yellow jersey.

Stage 4 - Clonakilty to Tralee: It was familiar territory to him, but he struck a bridge on a downhill bend near Glengarriff and fell heavily, damaging a shoulder and hip as well as putting his bike out of commission. Gene Mangan realised the gravity of the situation and gave Murphy his bike, on which he finished in a wrecked state in eighth place. He was taken to hospital but appeared for the next stage the following morning.

Stage 5 - Tralee to Nenagh: It was not a memorable stage for the injured warrior, but he did clock in six places behind the winner, Gene Mangan.

Stage 6 - Nenagh to Castlebar: Mangan won again, but Murphy pulled away from the main bunch shortly before the finish and gained a little on his rivals and held onto the yellow jersey with comfort.

Stage 7 - Castlebar to Sligo: Murphy started well in this stage and had a minute's advantage when he crashed near Castlerea. On remounting, he rode the wrong way for a while, possibly suffering from concussion, but he soon turned and finished with the bunch, with the irrepressible Mangan winning once more.

Stage 8 - Sligo to Dublin: Though showing signs of injury, the Iron Man refused to ride conservatively over the final stage and attacked early, with Meathmen Ben McKenna and Willie Heasley. They were joined before the finish by Gene Mangan, and it was he who crossed the line in first place to create a record of four stage wins in a row that still stands. But the Iron Man from Su Greine, Caherciveen, was a comfortable overall winner of the Ras by four minutes and 44 seconds.

MURPHY was now a celebrity in the sporting world, but he remained the private, enigmatic figure he had always been. Both work and money were scarce, but he did compete again in 1959 and 1960. He recalled his defence of the title in 1959 as follows: "After getting to Dublin, I slept on the street and then took my place at the start the following day. I won two stages." He finished third overall in 1960 and was crowned King of the Hills as well.

Like many others, he was forced to emigrate to England, in 1960, which really ended his career on the bike. When work got scarce in England, around 1990, he moved to Germany and in his own words "we built that country" - by 'we' he meant another 10 or 11 in the group as well as himself. "I stayed too long," he admits with a tinge of regret, "I got a fall and was not fit for that work again."

He is now back where his life began, but whether home or away, the 'Iron Man' will never be forgotten as long as the romance of bike racing lives on. God only knows what else he might have accomplished if the sponsorship and training facilities of modern times had been available to him, that dedicated, natural competitor.

- Micheal O Muircheartaigh

Convict

Saturday, July 22, 2006

CYCLING/Profile Mick Murphy: Breaking a collarbone, escaping body-snatchers, stealing a bike, drinking cow's blood. Mick Murphy tells Peter Woods the extraordinary story of how, after taking up racing only in 1957, he won Ireland's premier cycle race the following year
On May 25th last, a barrel-chested old man got out of a car on the side of a hill called the Maum, between Castleisland and Listowel. The old man walked with difficulty on two home-made sticks. He was early.
Within an hour crowds awaiting that day's stage of the FBD Insurance Rás had begun to arrive. Soon the man began to attract attention as people moved toward him to shake his hand. The man was Mick Murphy, also known as "The Iron Man".
His win in the 1958 Rás is one of the epics of Irish sport. People talked about him on the Maum that day. They said he trained with weights made from stone, that he made a living as a circus performer, that on one stage during that Rás - when the freewheel on his bike had broken - he stole an ordinary bicycle from a farmer and chased down the leading pack. They said that he rode for four days with a broken collarbone, that he would cycle for 40 miles having completed a gruelling stage just to cool down, that he drank cow's blood and ate raw meat.
He was indestructible.
Mick Murphy was born outside Cahirciveen in 1933. At the age of seven he began to dream of the road, of escape as a circus performer. He was already training under the guidance of a neighbour, training that included balancing a ladder on his chin.
He was inured to work from the start, leaving school at 11 to begin a job on the bogs. In his early teens he was working in a local quarry, or "Van Diemen's Land", as he terms it. By his late teens he was a spailpín, or roving labourer, among the rich farmers of North Cork.
But he left the relative security of labouring jobs and sought a precarious living as a street performer, an act in pick-up circuses and a grass-track rider - selling on for cash the prizes he accumulated at meetings all over Munster.
His contact with the circus sparked an interest in weightlifting and he began a training regime, making a gym out of stone weights and weights he stole from farmyards where he could.
He developed an interest in diet, and was already cycling great distances and living alone in the woods near Banteer - training obsessively - in 1958, when he entered the Rás for the first time.
Mick Murphy has instant recall of every day he spent in a bicycle race; he says he remembers each race from the finish backwards. He can remember what was written about him the day he stole the bike from the farmer on the stage between Kilkenny and Clonakilty. Pursued by the team car and a local priest, he got to Cork and was given a racing bicycle.
Despairing, he was lifted by the screams of "the shawlie women", from whom he used to buy food when he busked in the city as a street performer.
"Defend the yellow mantle!" someone screamed, and he chased the pack down into Clonakilty, finishing seventh and still in yellow. "His instincts governed his reactions . . . Murphy rode like a dingo on the prowl," an Australian journalist wrote.
He remembers the day, coming down from the Curlew Mountains, he took a wrong turn and cycled past the main peloton going in the wrong direction. And the crash at the bridge in Kenmare, where he broke a collarbone - then he peels away his shirt to show his misshapen shoulder.
And how, afterwards, in hospital in Tralee, dazed, bruised and bleeding, he hallucinated that the medical team were body-snatchers and escaped out the window. The next day he was strapped on to his bike and rode through the pain and on to his only Rás victory.
Nowadays Mick Murphy is something of a recluse. He lives where he grew up. He stopped cycling, in the wake of the 1960 Rás - after another bad fall on the road into Thurles, the Dublin team hunting him down "like wolves". He had gone too far, "stayed too long". He took the boat to England.
The life he led after was in many ways equally dramatic. He made a living as a bricklayer, took up wrestling and even attempted to make a career as a professional darts player. He continued to work from time to time as a circus performer in England and Germany. His last job was in Covent Garden in the late 1990s - eating fire.
In many ways, returning home, he was facing the inevitable - he had one fall too many, from a scaffolding a few years before. He walks slowly with the aid of the sticks he made himself. He receives no pension. He has none of the accoutrements of modern living, beyond a radio.
He retains nothing from his career as a cyclist, except for a few grainy, photocopied newspaper articles and a copy of the chapter written about him in Tom Daly's book The Rás. He says he feels no pain, doesn't suffer from the cold. He shops every three months, cheese, eggs, fruit juice - much the same diet that sustained him as a cyclist.
By most standards, his circumstances are dire. But few things are that simple and there are few men in any walk of life as aware of their own mythology as Murphy.
He has always had a contentious relationship with Cahirciveen - the one time he was in a Rás that went through the town, he says, two people turned out to see him.
He was always an outsider, seen, in his words, as "mad, bad and dangerous". He lived "cowboy style". He dug "so deep he could hear the sheep in Australia".
He knows the history of cycling, can name legions of cyclists and is fully aware of his place in it all - a man with an iron will known only in his country, his story carried the most part orally. He was called "the Clay Pigeon" because he couldn't be killed - though his fall from the scaffold in London almost did the job.
The way Mick Murphy cycled became a philosophy of life. He had no predictable rhythm. He led from the front. "The dogs in the street knew my style . . . the more they waited for me to shatter, the stronger I got."
Told to wash so he'd look the part before a race, he tore a bit of a shirt he'd trained in and tied the rag around his neck. "You could smell it a 100 yards away."
It was like the reek of stale sweat at the start of a fight, or the adrenalin-charged smell of a gym: "Without those things you wouldn't be there. Something must hype you up."
In the end, what did for him as a cyclist was what made him what he was in the first place. He had, he insists, throughout his Rás career, no team. In fact, he did have a team - in the 1958 Rás, Gene Mangan won four stages and Dan Ahern one. Both were part of the Kerry team. Mangan's achievement in particular was remarkable and, in flashes, Mick acknowledges this.
The fact, though, that what Murphy achieved eclipsed all of that points up the epic quality of his triumph. What did for him was the team - the Dublin team in particular. His last stage win came in the final stage of the 1959 Rás when he beat Shay O'Hanlon into Phoenix Park. The day in Thurles - when they hunted him down "like a pack of wolves" - was a harbinger.
O'Hanlon, and that team, dominated Irish cycling in the 1960s. But when Mick Murphy got on the boat to England, Irish sport lost one of its greatest characters. It lost a man who did indeed lead from the front and, to this day, is remorselessly without self-pity.
He competed in an era before sports psychologists, but would no doubt have provided work for a team of them. To be fair to him, he would have done it with great humour and style.
On May 25th last, for the first time in 46 years, Murphy returned to the Rás - to the Maum, a climb between Castleisland and Listowel.
He was happy with the location - the only club he'd ever cycled for was Castleisland ("Cowtown", as he calls it) - but he did take a bit of persuading to go back at all.
He met Dan Ahern, his comrade from 1958. "This was a cyclist. When Mike Murphy would go to make a break all you would see was the bike warping," said Ahern.
Murphy's name was shouted up and down the hillside. People lined up to have photos taken with him. Young cyclists who'd heard of him shook his hand. One confessed to going on training rides past his house in the hope of catching a glimpse.
Later, at the stage finish in Listowel, Dermot Dignam - who was with the "wolves" in Thurles that day - presented Murphy with a yellow jersey. This, a modern-day jersey, is the only proper memento he has from cycling.
It reminded him of that day he got lost heading into Sligo - a day that almost cost him the Rás - and of that descent into Clonakilty and the voice, a voice he could never put a face to, screaming at him: "Defend the yellow mantle!"
Did he consider himself "a savage road-man"?
That, he said, was a term learned from "the Dublin men", one he never liked.
He was "a convict of the road" - an arcane term, born out of the early days of the Tour de France. The time when cyclists lived on their wits, stole from the fields and slept rough. Men like Maurice Garin, "the White Bulldog", winner of the first Tour, who was sold as a child by his father to a chimney-sweep for a bucket of cheese.

petethedrummer

Podcast about the Rás.

http://thebikeshow.net/podpress_trac/web/510/0/bikeshow_20090309.mp3

Courtest of http://thebikeshow.net/