The Godfather of Irish Mountain Biking

We’ve a huge international following on thebikecomefirst.com so some of you may not know the person this post is about. His name is Richie Byrne… He is the Tyler Durden of Irish mountain biking. The self proclaimed and undisputed Godfather of Irish mountain biking.

He’s been around since we only rode steel bikes and has been a huge part of every influential club in Ireland ever since. He’s never been a huge fan of racing but has inspired and encouraged every rider he met along the way.

I first met Richie in the early 90’s on the trails. This loud ginger guy with beer goggle glasses stood out from the crowd with the rest of us spotty faced teens doing our best to stay under the radar. It wasn’t long before we became friends and spent the next few years having great adventures.

It wasn’t just mountain biking adventures though. Richie took me under his wing and thanks to him I climbed ‘The Ghost’ route in Dalkey quarry, which to this day, is one of my best achievements… They were great days. After every day out we would head back to the little basement flat that himself and Carol lived in and we would be stuffed to the gills with hot tea and fancy biscuits and we would always go home with some products thanks to Oriflame (where the love birds both worked)…

Fast forward a few years and I had been out of the sport for a while and think the Godfather had been kickboxing but still biking as far as I know. Thanks to my activities during my break this is all a bit hazy but I know when I got back into biking that ginger moustache was still there encouraging and abusing people in equal measures.

It wasn’t long till we hooked up again and after we formed Team-WORC that Riche was back on board and we were riding together again. The internet was in it’s virgin years and I set up a little website called mtbireland.com (just so happens a picture of me and a poster for epic mtb ladies spin in this link). It was the first Irish website just for mountain bikes and the forum was the place to hang out during working hours. Our club was doing well but Richie wasn’t happy. He had always been a rebel and the crowd involved in Team-WORC were the complete opposite. XC racers who liked to ride hard. I remember suggesting to Richie that ‘perhaps you need to start your own thing’ ‘ with people who just want to ride their bikes’ And so EPIC MTB was born. Richie was king of the castle and rightly so. Leading people across wild open mountain tops was what he wanted to do.

I’m going to fast forward a bit here as I could be here all day. In the next few years that big ginger stubborn head and my ginger (yeah I’m a ginger believe it or not) became arch enemies on the internet. Truth be told looking back we were both just trying to wind each other up and the reality is there were was never any bad blood between us.

There is not a lot more to add about Richie’s influence in mountain biking in Ireland. The man has done more beginner spins, ladies spins and kids spins than pretty much anyone else. He’s been doing it for 28 years.

And the reason for this post in the first place. Richie has had a funny year this past twelve months. The wild mountain man found that some days he was feeling confused and had to write things down in order to try and remember what he was doing day to day. Thanks to his wonderful family he went to the doctors and we now know that reason for his bad days. Skin cancer was the problem, along with it Richie developed a lump on his brain. After many false starts the past few days, today was the day the lump would be removed. I stared writing this post about an hour ago after seeing the photo or Richie with glazed eyes in recovery, and not for the first time since the news broke I found myself very upset.

So here I am. About to hit the publish button and there is a Facebook update. Thank you Carol for all the updates. I’ve never been more delighted to see that face smiling and sitting up in his hospital bed.

You can follow Richie’s blogs here