Course & Race Directors Turas Closing Speech
There’s nothing maybe bar trying to get my head around Darragh’s excel sheets that challenege me more than standing up here this evening. However, I am.
I am at home in the Gap of Dunloe on a field my father, uncles, brothers and neighbours levelled beneath the most powerful mountains I know. I am here at the end of a journey, a turas that seemed to test every cell in my being to bring about and when all of you have left, I am looking forward to lying in the heather at the top of the Chimneys there or climbing in the Gap and reflecting on it all.
This evening is about celebration, the celebration of the close of the first ever World Series Adventure Race to be held in Ireland. We are in the company of heroes this evening, sharing the grass with some of the most extraordinary athletes in the world. We are celebrating their race through our place and by all accounts our place made a very big impression!
For six months, I worked under the most extraordinary stress to plan The Turas with a remarkable team of associates. However, a long time ago it seems the Universe decreed that we would be here this evening, that somehow this group of diverse individuals would work on and deliver this event.
In Darragh Ó Suilleabháin from Puck, we found a brilliant mind in a very special man and the complex logistics involved in running this race were entirely his responsibility. This evening, I want to honour him for providing the framework and management without which The Turas simply could not have happened. Árd fhear Darragh!
A crucial element of Darragh’s work was the transportation of teams and most of all of their equipment to and from twelve locations throughout the peninsulas. Months ago, I approached Mike Buckley who possesses a rare ability to navigate through all kinds of rí-rá to get a job done. This week that ability was challenged to new heights but Mike, DB O Connor and his team, did a tremendous job! Míle buíochas lads!
John Healy was Assistant Director for this race and the face that every athlete met the length and breath of the course; from his powerful presence at the team briefing in Dingle before the event to welcoming home the last team over the line this morning at 6am. From Ovens in County Cork, I know John as a fine mountaineer, a noble and dedicated individual of immense ability and integrity. In this project, John assumed highly technical responsibilities but was always on-hand to pick up even the pettiest of tasks. Your effort John was simply magnificent, delivered as always with a wonderful courtesy.
In the earliest days, Brendan O Brien recommended a close friend of his to manage the technology behind this race, in providing the event with communications, a timing and tracking system. That man was Marcus Geoghegan and this week after six months of careful planning, he delivered a splendid support that simply knitted the whole thing together. It was a most onerous of tasks Marcus and I thank you.
To my fellow directors of Adventure Racing Ireland, Vanessa and Brendan I want to extend my gratitude for their presence on the road we have shared. We are something of an unlikely bunch that seemed having been thrown together for this and in the many tough days of this journey, each of us encountered struggles unprecedented in our lives. There were many days we almost gave up in the face of huge odds but somehow a greater hand than ours often seemed to take the rudder and keep us on course.
It was Vanessa who first approached me in this field after the Irish Adventure Challenge and taunted me with the idea of a World Series event. She has invested here heart and soul into this project that no doubt threatened to overwhelm us all on occasion. In Brendan, we had a partner and CEO of incredible diligence. I know Brendan it was tougher than you expected after we asked you to join us last October. I know that the effort involved pressurised all other aspects of your life and I look forward as I know you and Fiona do to not having my number come up on your phone for a while!
In designing the course I sought to touch upon each of the five peninsulas of the south west and to trace a route linking powerful places in this spectacular land. I have spent my life poking around this place and exploring it’s diversity and nuances. In childhood I was captivated by the skyline behind us here, the dramatic “V” of the Gap. I was blessed to grow up in this place and remain in it’s awe each day.
At the heart of the vision behind this event for me has been the idea of using a great race as a thread through which stories of landscapes and people would be told, of letting a Turas occur that would be a celebration among ourselves of our place and allow the world’s finest adventure athletes trace an epic journey through our valleys, over our mountains, into our oceans, lakes and rivers.
In the earliest days we received very special support from the man I was honoured would act as Patron to the race, John O Donoghue, then Minister for the Arts, Sports and Tourism in our government. This man of Kerry understood the vision from the outset.
I journeyed to Scotland to meet Geoff Hunt, Director of the Adventure Racing World Series last year and began what has been a highly informative and creative interaction with the man most associated with the sport. Subsequently, I met him in Portugal and in New Zealand and here. I have enjoyed working with him and particularly enjoyed seeing and experiencing the friendship he and his wife Pacale have developed here. I am grateful for your trust in us Geoff and your guidance.
At centre stage this week were the 19 teams from around the world who came to participate. I speak on behalf of the entire organisation and community in expressing our honour at hosting you this week. Today, I have received dozens of calls from around the region telling me how people enjoyed meeting with many of you, of your graciousness, of how your exploits will remain on in the lore of this place for years to come. I want to thank you for your presence at the Turas, Ireland’s first venture onto the world stage of your sport.
Your presence here resulted this week in communities throughout the region, linked now forever by the thread of the Turas, rising up to welcome and support these teams and the race in a manner that really only we can do. At each race transition and sometimes just along the route this week, hill and coastal communities came out with beaming faces, used the excuse to have the craic and celebrate athleticism of Fenian-proportions.
To Caroline Boland and Ann Curran in Dingle, Jim Kennedy and Denis Quinlan in Schull, James O Mahoney in Kilcrohane, Neil and Katie Lucey in Gúgán Barra, Louis Moriarty and Nicola Duggan in Sneem, Ger Kennedy in Portmagee, Paul and Paula Duff at my favourite café on Earth - the Lighthouse on Valentia Island, Kieran Walsh in Caherciveen, Eimear Ní Mhurchú in Domoda, Gene and Joanne in the Black Valley…….thank you not only for managing your Transitions but for laying at the heart of memories likely to remain with many of us forever.
The Turas was broken into thirteen stages and each individually managed by individual I know and respect as outstanding outdoor men and women.
Jim Kennedy and his Atlantic Sea Kayaking based in Skibbereen are without equal in Ireland in his field. Jim managed the sea kayaking legs in Dingle, Roaringwater and Dunmanus Bays, the swim at Kilmackilloge, the row in Kenmare Bay, the sea sprint in Valentia Harbour and the Killarney Lakes. It was a mammoth task and executed by this great man with grace.
On these stages too, I want to acknowledge the crucial rib support provided on these stages by Tommy McGillycuddy of Skellig Sea Adventures, Andrew Quigley & Co of the South West Fisheries Board, We had Jon Coyle, Paddy Casey, Kav, Derry Doyle, Don Courtney also putting in a tremendous 48 hours of work towards the end of the race, thank you also to the Dingle and Goleen Coast Guards, and divers Derry Doyle and John Millaney, and the Dingle Harbour Master, Brian Farrell and Dave Harte in Schull.
I was in with Brain Galvin in Beaufort at 4 am this morning. We were discussing his family, including my incredible god-daughter Keelin and his father Timmy whom I met one snowy day up in a snow-filled Eisc na bhFiach/Curved Gulley, dressed not goretex or equipped with ice axe but decked out in a suit!
Brian Galvin was the creator of the mountain biking sections of The Turas. He grew up like me here at the foot of these mighty mountains. A returned emigrant from the days when the majority of our generation sought employment and brighter futures beyond the shores of this island of ours, Brian learned mountain biking in the dried soils of Australia until the call of the savage back to native shores brought him home and work with Mike in Dingle with Irish Rope Access, a specialist company borne out of our experiences in this landscape behind us this evening.
Biking and adventure racing took precedent for Brian and once back home in Kerry, he began to explore the potential of our highlands. This week the world’s finest adventure athlete’s followed some of these explorations and an hour after the start of this great epic race, Turas teams biked under the glare of High Definition cameras located on ground and in the air along the rim of the great Ice-carved Peddlar’s Lake corrie. Thereafter, teams pedalled over courses in West Cork and South Kerry designed and managed by Galvin with assistance in particular from Micheál Concannon, our neighbour here and currently President of the Irish Cycling Federation.
Go raibh maith agaibh!
On the trekking stages, great mountaineers Noel O Leary and John Healy from Cork and John Hussy from Kerry respectively managed the traverse of Mount Brandon, the incredible 70kms of the Beara ridge-line and the McGillycuddy Reeks. In Beara, this involved a long camp in by Ruairí Sherlock and girlfriend Helen Dodson for some 48 hours on Cnoc Eoghan in horrendous weather.
Donal O Dowd ran the very earliest adventure races in Ireland nearly twenty years ago. He has been a solid participant and inspiration behind this event not just this week where he managed his crew from Cappanlea through the orienteering and archery stages of the course but behind the scenes from our earliest check out of the World Championships in Scotland together.
Patrick Cuffe and Mikey Joe Burns lay behind a mighty bunch of people who’s passion is rowing a highlight this week was a 5 am race restart out of Kilmack across Kenmare Bay steered by coxes from around the southwest. I want to acknowledge the huge effort for everyone involved.
The Health, Safety and Rescue brief on this was simply enormous and in Mike Shea, we simply had the very best man in Ireland as Director. Shea and I share a friendship borne out of shared time in our youth on the crags and peaks behind us here. Yesterday’s abseil and jumar took place on a great wall of overhanging rock up here in the Gap we had the joy of first ascending. Mike is recognised nationally and indeed beyond our shores for his expertise in the area of difficult access and rescue with his specialist companies, Work at Height, Play at Height and Irish Rope Access.
In preparing for this race, Mike prepared a thorough procedure to deal with any eventuality that might occur, provided a professional rescue team back up throughout the course. These included Ivan Counihan, Stephan Renard, Ray Murphy, Dave Hicks and Mick Quirke. Under Mike’s guidance, Kieran O Regan and Mick Tuffrey rigged our ropes sections in the Gap while Shea and Raymond Coffey, Houdini-like pulled a 200m zip wire out of his pocket spanning Bealach Béime yesterday. Without Mike Shea, I simply could not direct this race and for all that he represents to many of us here, I want to say thank you and we love you!
Moving through the race course this week, we had two volunteer medics, a nun from County Down, Dr Eithna Synott and Dr Joanna Zakrzewski from England. These two amazing women were unknown to us a week ago but months ago on hearing the Turas they volunteered to take a week out of their busy practices to provide medical care to our teams and staff, every hour of the event from 6 am in Dingle last Monday to this morning at 6 am when the last team came over the line. Eithne is at it this morning again in Lourdes but I am delighted to have Jo with us this evening, most especially that she is still talking with me after I abandoned her for hours high over Com a Sathairn Lake two days ago!
Last December of so Vanessa brought a soft spoken to meet with Brendan and I in Killarney. Before a planned meeting at the Aghadoe Heights, Scott Millaney drove into the Black Valley on what was a miserable evening near the shortest day on the year. In the six months it has taken the Earth to change faces to the Sun, Scott has remained with this project out of a deep understanding that somehow we were on the right track, that somehow we had something very special here. This week, Scott’s hunch has been validated with some 60 hours of footage that we can now make into a film. I want to thank you Scott for your belief in us and for staying the course and I am honoured and deeply grateful for you trust in me and I also wish to acknowledge the role played by Neil Clancy in this relationship.
As a result of the imagery produced by Scott Millaney, Kerry and West Cork will soon be catapulted into the psyche of the international community with images of adventure sports simple never seen before and that alone is very, very exciting to me! This footage was captured by some nine different crews under the directorship of a rare nuclear experiment within the human form, the antithesis of the dour Scott, a man with a rather common name of Simon Smythe.I met Simon just a week ago but I sense we will turas again together!
One of my dearest friends flew some these film crews this week. Mick Hennessy and I came together through a shared connection with Sceilig, a wild rock that attracted fifth century adrenaline junkies - early Christian hermits who built and dwelt among beehive huts on a cliff top at the Edge of The World. Mick Hennessy is a humble man, an outstanding friend and an extraordinary pilot. A love of high places and climbing allowed our friendship grow over twenty years complete with all kinds of adventures that under-pinned this week’s extraordinary flying in and around our wildest land and seascapes. Gráim thú Mick!
Before I finish, I want to add my own personal gratitude to a number of people who have worked closely behind the scenes for months to make this happen, in particular to John Pierce, Catherine Evans of SKDP, to Ceann Comhairle and Turas Patron John O Donoghue and Dan Collins, to Kerry County Coucillors, Michael Healy Rae and Johnny Porridge O Connor, to Steve Ó Cúaláin, Eamonn Ó Neachtain, Susan Ní Churnáin agus Anne Marie Nic Gearailt ón t-Údarás, to Fiona Buckley of Failte Ireland South West, to Máire ní Léime of MFG, Paul O Toole of Tourism Ireland, journalist and friend, Harry McGee, Kevin Tarrant,Pat Chawke and Jerry O Reilly of The Aghadoe Heights Hotel, Maire Treasa Ni Ghrifin. Conor Hennigan and the Malton Hotel, Louis Moriarty and Sneem Hotel and The Skeilligs Hotel Dingle.
Finally, I want to say a special thank you to Fiola Foley and Brian Barnes who did a wonderful job this week in managing our public relations, to Martina Sykorova for her dealings with our teams, for Eileen Daly for her handing of the complex accommodation requirements for the race, to Fiona Barry for her multi tasking that included her management of our corps of volunteers, to Tony Daly here for his powerful encouragement throughout and in particular his role as coordinator of our festivals and to my cousin Karen O Reilly for her assistance with this Summer Solstice Festival. To Feidhlim Bryan, our event manager here tonight, to Christy Collard for his creativity and woodhenge, to Derek Kelley our stage manager and all of our musicians, to Jean Marie and his incredible crew of chefs and staff from Out of the Blue in Dingle, to Gardaí, Enda Ward, Padraig Sears and Barry O Rourke, to my family, to Donal, Francis and Jerry and all the lads here at the golf course, to my cousin Paul for the use of his field for parking this evening, to my neighbours and to our golf club members for the support and patience……and to the media for your accurate recording of our event.
Sin a bhfuil…oiche mahith agus go raibh maith agaibh!