The yellow jersey still fits.
Sé O’Hanlon isn’t sure which year it’s from or which podiums he wore it on, just that it’s from sometime in the 1960s when he ruled the Rás Tailteann.
It’s 60 years since O’Hanlon won his first Rás, the first of four victories in the storied stage race, but the 80-year-old Dubliner looks as trim as ever.
“I never retired from cycling, I just failed to restart,” he says.
No one spent more time in the yellow of the Rás than O’Hanlon.
From 1959 to 1984 he won a record 24 stages and for three years in succession in the 1960s wore the leader’s jersey exclusively.
“I think I spent something like six months of my life just riding the Rás. It’s an awful waste of your youth,” he says, laughing.
“Ah no, I don’t really mean that.”
The Rás returns this year after a four-year gap with domestic and international cyclists set to battle it out over five stages, starting in Tallaght on Wednesday.
O’Hanlon plans to watch some of the action along the way.
He’s still active on the bike, cycling 25kms twice a week and is a regular at the Awesome Walls indoor rock climbing centre in Finglas.
“I go there twice a week as well,” he says.
“I fell off the wall one day. I headed up the wall and next minute I was hanging down because I’d had a cardiac arrest.
“That was six years ago.
“It was a fright for all the family, they were sort of told I wouldn’t live, but I did live and here I am back out the other side, still doing things.”
It was the quick thinking of the staff at Awesome Walls and the perseverance of the Fire Brigade that saved him.
“I was very lucky that the staff there had done a refresher course the week before on CPR. They kept me going,” he says.
“Then the fire brigade came. They had me in the ambulance and they thought I was knackered.
“They were giving me darts with the defibrillator and nothing happened and the fella was about to give up and he said, ‘I think this fella will hang on’, so he kept giving me darts.
“Sure enough I did hang on.
“But your life is dependent on little things, even someone’s attitude.”
The experience and the fragile nature of life
reminded O’Hanlon of a story his late father Jimmy once told him.
Jimmy O’Hanlon was one of the Anti-Treaty rebels who occupied the Four Courts during the Battle of Dublin.
It’s coming up to the 100th anniversary of the siege which marked the start of the Civil War and the story has always stayed with O’Hanlon.
“It’s about the only story he ever told me (about it),” he says.
“He was in the Four Courts and himself and another fella were looking out the window.
“There was a passer-by out on the street, giving out yards to them for causing trouble and all that.
“The fella with my father said: ‘I’ll plug him.’
“And my da said, ‘Ah don’t bother, don’t waste it.’ And he didn’t shoot him.
“It struck me how finely balanced life is.
“That fella’s life depended on my father saying: ‘Ah don’t bother’. And my life depended on the guy in the fire brigade saying: ‘I think he might hang on’.”
The health scare hasn’t slowed him down. Nor has he lost any of his competitive streak.
When out walking with old cycling companions, he’s still trying to outdo them, as they are with him.
Still on each other’s wheels. Still trying to turn on the taps.
Even in the car at the traffic lights he catches himself trying to get away fastest, still looking for the break.
O’Hanlon was born just off Dorset Street on Innisfallen Parade and rode for the Clan Brugha club in Dublin.
At the time domestic cycling was split along Civil War lines and O’Hanlon was part of the National Cycling Association — a 32-county organisation that was banned from competing in international events.
But what the NCA lacked in international competition, it made up for with the Rás — a gruelling road race around the country.
O’Hanlon finished 13th in his first Rás in 1959 as a 17-year-old and sixth the following year. After finishing third in 1961 he was determined to win it in 1962.
“I sort of started visualising the whole thing, as people do now,” says O’Hanlon.
“Nobody had heard of visualisation in those days. I kept on convincing myself that I was going to win the race.
“Also that I was going to come into the Phoenix Park on the last day in the yellow jersey by myself. And by Jesus,
I did it.”
O’Hanlon took the yellow jersey on the second day and had built up an extraordinary lead of over 19 minutes by the time he came home alone.
It remains the biggest ever winning margin in the race and his parents, Jimmy and Susan, were there to see him do it.
“They didn’t go to a lot of races, they never had a car. But they were up in the Park for the finish and they were delighted,” he says.
“I can still see the day. Coming down the road and crossing the line and saying: ‘Job done, on to the next one’.”
After a spell in France he began a period of unmatched dominance in the Rás in 1965.
From the opening day of the 1965 race until the last day of the 1967 renewal, O’Hanlon was the only rider to wear the yellow jersey.
“Years later, in the 1990s, I started to put all the Rás results onto a website,” he says.
“It was only then, 30 years later that I realised I had been the only one to wear the jersey for three years. I was totally gobsmacked.
“When you’re doing these things, you do it. And you go on to the next one, you don’t stand around talking about it.”
One stage in particular sticks in his mind from that period when he was king of the road.
“It was the fifth stage from Ballinasloe to Castleisland in 1967,” he says.
“I attacked at the start and got up the road with two or three others.
“We were looking at 110 miles ahead all the way to Castleisland.
“You would never consciously set out to do that. But I fell into it and had to keep going.
“I managed to stay away from the very start when the flag dropped until the finish in Castleisland, and that’s a thing that I put a value on.”
The visit of the Czechoslovakian team in 1968 was also particularly memorable for O’Hanlon.
“Those boys were really good,” he says.
“I had a row with the Czechs after the first day and Milan Hrazdíra, the guy who eventually won the Rás, came over to me.
“He was giving out yards in Czech about our tactics and he spit on the ground.
“It was very funny because my wife Marie, she came over and kicked him on the shin.
“She was famous in our family forever after. Standing up for her man!”
O’Hanlon remained a force in the race throughout the 1970s and was in the peloton when Stephen Roche won in 1979.
He was also instrumental in ending the split in Irish cycling as president of the NCA and bringing the sport under one unified umbrella.
After falling ill and abandoning the 1983 race, he decided the 1984 Rás would be his last.
“I didn’t like the idea of finishing my last Rás in the car,” he says.
“So I said I’d ride it the next year to finish on my bike, but it was sort of an anti-climax.
“When you ride a race and your intention is just to finish it, it’s not the same.
“I’d call that a lack of ambition.”
When he returned in 1985, it was in a car, driving race official Jack Watson around the country.
On one stage they were following a break when Watson told him they were getting too close to the riders.
“I forgot I was driving a car, I thought I was still in the race,” he says.
The Rás was a huge part of his life and he remained involved in various forms as new stars like Sam Bennett emerged and put their names on the stage winners’ board.
After a four-year gap O’Hanlon is delighted to see the race back on the calendar.
“You get used to the fact that you’re a fossil in the limestone of the event going on year after year after year,” says O’Hanlon.
“But when the actual rock disappears and takes the fossil with it…you know…it’s a pity.
“So it’s great to see it back.”
He laughs at the suggestion of a ceremonial starting position in the line-up.
The competitive edge is still too strong...
“I’d start elbowing somebody,” he says, laughing.
He has four children; Emmett, Ronan, Aisling and Seán and 10 grandchildren and lives with Seán since his wife Marie died in 2016.
And he’s no intention of slowing down either.
“I do about 25kms on the bike now,” he says.
“I think of the things we did years ago and what I’m doing now seems less than pathetic.
“On the other hand I know I’m lucky to be able to do what I’m able to do.
“And Bob Dylan is still plugging around. There’s lots of old fellas still plugging around.
“I’m 80, I’m active, I’m lucky.”
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