No limits for racer Cillian
By Thomas Conway
Cillian Dunne wasn’t always a wheelchair racer. But he has always been a competitor. The 25-year-old Kilbarron native was dealt a difficult hand in life. He was born with spina bifida, a condition which affects the spine as a result of a neural tube defect, damaging the cord and limiting the function of certain nerves. Consequently, he has never had any feeling in his legs. That should have held him back. Inspiringly, it hasn’t.
For the past several years, Cillian has climbed the ranks on the elite ladder of global wheelchair racing, becoming one of Ireland’s leading athletes in the sport. In 2016, he scooped three medals at the World Under-23 Championships in Prague, receiving a hero's welcome in his homeplace upon his return.
Since then, the Sports Science graduate has gone from strength to strength, defying the limits imposed on him at birth and forging a reputation as one of the country’s most promising para-athletes. As previously mentioned however, he wasn’t always a wheelchair racer. He always had an innate attraction to sport alright, but his career might have taken an entirely different direction, were it not for a serious health set-back in 2012.
“When I was five, Dad brought me to a para-sport open day, and I tried a rake of different sports, but always kind of had an attraction to athletics,” he recalls.
“So, I started off as a seated javelin and discus thrower. And just so people can get an idea of what is involved, you’re sitting on a kind of a bar-stool-like seat, and obviously you have to stay in the seat and complete your throw. I competed for Ireland internationally in that, but then in 2012, things kind of changed. I got major bowel surgery and lost the majority of my weight, so I couldn’t be a thrower anymore because I just didn’t have the size or the strength behind the throw. But rather than give up sport, I said I’d just change sports, and that’s what pushed me to pursue wheelchair racing.”
Life is often capricious for people with a disability. Circumstances change, new challenges arise, health levels fluctuate. Adaption is crucial. Cillian made the transition from thrower to racer almost seamlessly, abandoning his previous discipline and adjusting to the new code with the minimum of fuss. In effect, he reinvented himself, and became consumed by the world of the wheelchair racer.
So too did his father Larry, who has been alongside Cillian from the very beginning. Now retired, Larry Dunne is Cillian’s official coach. He is every bit as ferociously committed, every bit as doggedly determined, every bit as eager to learn and absorb. The duo bounce off each other, floating ideas, expressing opinions, gluing themselves to YouTube videos of famous wheelchair racers spinning their way to paralympic success. Their relationship is as close as it possibly could be, both from a familial and a professional perspective. Larry’s eye for detail is staggering. He outlines Cillian’s weekly training routine meticulously, with the sort of pedanticism which defines every great coach.
“The general gist of it would be that he trains six days a week,” Larry explains.
“On Monday, he’d be on the track for about two-and-a-half hours, doing different sprint intervals - forty metres, sixty metres, 100 metres and so on. All in all, he’d be doing about 14km per training session.
“Then on Tuesday morning he’d be in the gym, doing heavy lifting. Tuesday afternoon he’d be back on the track. Wednesdays would be more based around endurance. Thursday might involve a speed gym session. And Fridays and Saturdays would usually be a combination of things. Sundays then are his day off.”
Lofty ambitions
Both Cillian and Larry have lofty ambitions, but they don’t attempt to conceal the fact that Cillian still has a long way to go. He watched last year’s Tokyo Paralympics green with envy. He wanted to be there. However, he still has plenty of time.
Larry makes no secret of the fact that he isn’t an expert. Both he and Cillian work in tandem. They feed off one another, floating ideas and sharing insights, always searching for an extra edge. Larry admits that, when it comes to wheelchair racing, coaching expertise doesn’t really exist in Ireland. That means the duo must travel, usually to the UK, but often further afield as well, as he explains.
“I used to run badly about a hundred years ago,” Larry chuckled.
“I would have a small background in athletics, but I kind of evolved into it as Cillian got into it. But the thing is, there are hardly any coaches in Ireland. Only a handful of wheelchair racers as well.
“So, we kind of had to learn as we went along. We’d travel over to the UK an awful a lot, just to chat and talk to the experts over there, learn from them. But that’s just how it is. There are no formal qualifications or anything like that, not in Ireland. You have to learn as you go.”
The UK might be home to its fair share of knowledge and expertise, but Switzerland is widely considered as the centre of the wheelchair racing universe. Trailing in second is Thailand, which is somewhat surprising, given that the southeast Asian country is less than fiscally sound and has questionable democratic credentials.
According to Cillian, the Thais invest heavily in their athletes, identifying potential talent from an early age and funnelling racers into development squads on an annual basis. This generates results. Thailand almost always lands medals at the Paralympics and at World Championships.
“Over in Thailand, if you’re a wheelchair racer, you’re sent to a special training camp at sixteen, and racing is all you do” Cillian continues.
“They take the sport very seriously over there. They bring in maybe fifty or sixty new racers each year. And that’s why they’re a global powerhouse. They come out with paralympic champions left, right and centre.”
Cillian speaks about the Paralympics with a burning sense of desire, but also a degree of openness. Someday, sooner or later, one suspects he will become a Paralympian, possibly even a Paralympic medallist, or indeed a champion. But he is realistic. He has a long-term plan, a carefully calculated pathway which he has taken time to envisage. Success won't happen overnight. It will be the product of a series of incremental steps. In the immediate term, his objective is to make the grade for the elite development squad next February. Beyond that, the World Championships are his goal, and then, if his times are adequate, qualification for Paris 2024 should follow.
“The short-term goal would be to get into the elite training camp next February,” Cillian said.
“Medium-term, you’re talking about the World Senior Championships next year in Paris, and then long-term would obviously be the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris as well.
“To get to Paris, there are ‘A’ and ‘B’ qualifying times which you have to hit, but in Ireland it’s kind of a bit more complicated. You have to meet the ‘A’ qualifying standard and be within ninety per-cent of the third fastest qualifying time in the world. So just to give an example, if the third fastest time is say, 100 hundred seconds, then I’d have to hit ninety. It is complex.”
As any elite athlete will tell you, having a plan is all very well. Inevitably, however, there will be challenges, obstacles which one will have to confront, bumps in the road which will be impossible to foresee and difficult to surmount. This is accentuated in the case of para-athletes. Injury is one thing. Health is quite another.
Larry Dunne explains that for para-athletes, health is always top of the agenda. Because of their disability, many para-athletes are vulnerable to persistent health problems, recurring issues which might have plagued them since birth. Hence, close attention must be paid to preserving overall health. Take Cillian for example - he’s benching 98kg in the gym, training six days a week, as well as competing and travelling regularly. He can’t afford not to look after himself, as Larry explains.
“The thing about any para-athlete is that they have the added problem of health,” he said.
“Any disability brings with it its own sider-effects or problems or whatever you want to call them. And you have to factor that it. So, on top of training and all of that, Cillian has to make sure that he stays healthy, that he looks after himself. Because he has spina-bifida, Cillian has no feeling below his hips, so he has to make sure his legs are alright and look after that aspect of himself. That’s the added challenge of being a para-athlete.”
GRADUATED NATURE
Physically, Cillian Dunne is currently in a good place. Mentally, he’s also thriving. It can be easy for an athlete to grow tired of the daily grind, weary of the process, fed up with the repetition of it all. But Cillian loves it. He loves the incrementalism of training, the graduated nature.
He isn’t quite living the dream just yet, but he’s satisfied with where he is at. On the track, he’s being coached by Richard Chiassaro, a former Paralympic champion who transitioned from being a wheelchair rugby player in 2011. Cillian is in touch with him pretty much every day. When he’s not sharing ideas with Larry, he’s floating proposals with Richard, suggesting little tweaks which might enhance his overall performance. He idolised Richard as a teenager, and he still does today, in a different sense.
But does he have what it takes to emulate his idol, to go the whole way and ascend to the top of the wheelchair racing world? He believes he does. He trains like he does. He has a father who shares that same conviction. Cillian Dunne is already one of Kilbarron’s most famous sons, but his future seems even brighter than his past. His life is a rollercoaster, complete with spinning wheels and soaring speed. It’s only a matter of time before he shoots down the track to his next success. Keep an eye on him. This young man is going places.