Carrick Wheelers and the roads that made Sean Kelly are the same ones that made me.
Born in Belgium, but very much a product of Ireland, cycling called from an early age and I was in the right place to hear that calling.
There is a proud tradition of cycling in Carrick-on-Suir, and it’s an honour to be able to carry that tradition on.
The cycling scene and the hard men of cycling from that part of the world are the ones who got me in shape to win the Junior Tour of Ireland in 2008, still one of my proudest moments.
Injuries in my early career weren’t kind to me, and it was a hard road back to winning ways at the 2013 Tour of Britain.
I’ll be forever grateful to NetApp Endura for my first professional contract. It put me on the road with the pros before wearing the colours of Bora Hansgrohe where I was in a position to win even bigger races – a stage a Paris-Nice in 2017, four stage wins at the Tour of Turkey that same year, and then three stage wins at the 2018 Giro d’Italia.
Winning seems to make me hungrier for more, and there’s definitely more to come.
