Interview: What Mark Rohan did next

JOE chats to Mark Rohan on life after winning two gold medals in the London Paralympics.

By Mark O'Toole

It’s only a few months since JOE last spoke to Mark Rohan about his life and career prior to the Paralympics.

Now, Rohan sits across from JOE at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin with his two handcycling gold medals lying on the table next to him.

When invited to lift the gold medals he won in London they’re found to be unexpectedly heavy and when you chat to Rohan you find the double-Paralympic medallist’s thoughts equally weighty and suprising.

For Rohan, in a pensive, yet pleasant mood, winning the Handcycling H1 Road Race and Time Trial gold medals was the culmination of a long journey from an accident in 2001 that left him paralysed, to the months and months of training that led to his success as double Paralympic medallist this year.

Yet, now that the goal has been achieved, Rohan is pondering over the next part of his story and the question: “What happens next?”

Short term, Rohan is resting and holidaying. After that, Mark wants to strike while the iron is hot and promote the sport of handcycling with the might of Sky, who support Mark through their Sky Sports Scholarships and through the Paralympic Talent Search which he is involved with.

Being an elite athlete is a selfish, selfish game so maybe I will change tact and go behind the scenes somewhere

Then the difficult choices have to be made, he says.

“You have to ask yourself, four years down the line, it’s a lot of hard work, a lot of commitment, would you like a change?” he comments before you put it to him that as an Olympic and World champion he has done everything in the sport now.

“In terms of achievement there’s not much left I can do,” says the softly-spoken Westmeath man.

“There is one thing left I suppose, the chance of a gold medal in the team relay, which you need three athletes from Ireland to compete with. If we could get to Rio with a team relay that would be something I haven’t achieved yet and that would be something that would interest me. It would also work with my goal of developing the sport.

“I think I have to change tact, if everyone lived their lives by an Olympic cycle you know ‘for four years, I’m going to do this, then for four years I’m going to focus on something else,’ it’s probably a good way to live. So I think I might just change focus a small bit,” says Rohan, who is no stranger to other sports having competed in Gaelic Football, archery and wheelchair basketball.

It’s still up in the air, Mark ruminates.

“Being an elite athlete is a selfish, selfish game so maybe I will change tact and go behind the scenes somewhere. I don’t know... come January if I sign up as a granted athlete and I get €40,000 to train and compete and stuff and your heart isn’t there – you feel like you’re taking up someone else’s place, you know?

“I’ll have to see if the fire is still there when I start back training,” he finishes.

But what about the people Mark has inspired with his success? The Paralympics was bigger than ever and stories like Mark's and his fellow handcyclist Alex Zanardi have raised the profile of the sport.

“That’s one thing I wasn’t too aware of maybe... the joy of other people at my medals and inspiring other athletes. Maybe by winning these gold medals you’re working behind the scenes by getting people out there on the bike. That’s one way to look at it maybe... there’ll be more interest in the World Championships now,” answers Rohan thoughtfully.

It was like something out of Days of Thunder, it was surreal.

Rohan was relaxed and gracious to his fellow athletes ahead of September’s games when we last spoke to him. “If it happens, it happens. If someone else beats me, fairplay,” was his attitude.

JOE, still shocked with this relaxed, content attitude so alien to high-level sports people, asked whether he meant what he said.

“I did mean it because I think a lot of athletes are now becoming  performance-based rather than gold medal-based,” he replies. “If you perform well you have a better chance of winning that gold rather than focusing on the goal itself. If a better team beats you on the day what can you do?”

As if to illustrate the plot twists fortune can hoist on people Mark says: “I was definitely relieved to win though. One of my main rivals punctured in the road race, so that could have been me.”

Rohan also spoke back in the previous interview about how pleased he was to finally have his family and friends see him do what he does best, as the events are usually held in far off countries.

“It was great,” he says with a smile.

JOE suggests that with his former fellow Westmeath footballers exiting the Championship early this summer, all of the county was relying on him to give them something to cheer about.

Rohan laughs jokingly at the suggestion. “Yeah, there was nothing else going on!”

We're then told of how the entire small village of Ballynahown invaded a pub in Seven Oaks, near the Brand’s Hatch track, to celebrate Rohan’s win. The one patron frequenting the bar at the time was utterly confused, Rohan tells us laughing.

Recalling the summer adventure one of Mark’s clearest memories was first arriving into Brand’s Hatch prior to his two gold medal wins.

“It was great. Driving into Brand’s Hatch you could see all the flags, the fans and the BMW’s lined up... it was like something out of Days of Thunder, it was surreal.”

Fanciful, unlikely and surreal.

Even Tom Cruise would find Mark Rohan’s wonderful story crazy.

Sky Sports Scholar Mark Rohan was in Dublin together with mentor Sky Sports News presenter Sean Fletcher.