Kilbarron wheelchair racer eyes Paralympics

A wheelchair athlete from Lower Ormond who won five senior national track titles last month has embarked on an ambitious mission to qualify for the Paralympic Games in Paris in three years time.

Twenty-four-year-old Cillian Dunne from Kilbarron recorded the amazing achievement when he won gold in the 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 metres at the Wheelchair Sports National Finals on the track at Carlow Institute of Technology.

In notching up his five golds, the Kilbarron athlete set two new national championship records in the 100 and 800 metres. He has previously set national records in the 200 and 400 metres and is only a second off the record for the 1,500 metres.

Cillian is the leading wheelchair racer in Ireland and should he manage to break the record for the latter event - which looks very likely - then he will be the first ever Irish wheelchair athlete to hold five national senior records.

IMPRESSIVE RESULTS

With such impressive credentials, his dream of qualifying for the World Games in Japan next year and the Paralympics in 2024 are well within reach and so he and his father Larry, who is his coach, have set out a plan that involves an all out effort to achieve those goals.

Already a very experienced athlete at international level, Cillian scooped a Nenagh Guardian Sportstar Award in 2016 in recognition of winning three medals as a junior at the Wheelchair and Amputee World Games, silver for both the 200 and 400 metres and bronze in the 100 metres.

But the move to success at senior international level takes a much higher degree of commitment and booking a ticket to the World Games and Paralympics requires training like a professional, having the right backup team and significant financial resources to purchase proper equipment and to travel abroad to get good quality racing and training.

Currently Cillian is depending solely on the financial support of his family and it would be a dream come true if he could secure sponsorship.

“It would be great if we could afford to buy a carbon fibre wheelchair because just getting that piece of equipment would be the difference between the level I am at now and where I need to be,” says Cillian.

But such wheelchairs, costing between €12,000 and €14,000, do not come cheap, yet having one can be the difference between winning an losing at the high level at which Cillian needs to compete.

Another crucial factor is that he needs to travel abroad to get professional coaching and to compete in high quality races to have any hopes of securing the qualifying times to secure his ticket to the worlds and Paralympics.

The centre of excellence that international wheelchair racers from all over Europe gravitate to in order to up their game is Switzerland, but as Larry points out, plane tickets to that country don’t come cheap.

Larry says they were both blown away by the standards of support for wheelchair athletes when they both travelled to Switzerland in 2016 where Cillian spent a week in a training camp.

“The trip really opened our eyes,” says Larry. “You have all the top coaches there and the top athletes do a lot of their training there. It’s where all the expertise is.”

GREAT SPEED

As the top wheelchair racer in his T54 category, Cillian is now at a level where he can reach speeds up to 32 kilometres an hour on the track and has attained a speed of 52 kilometres an hour downhill in road races. “That kind of speed in a wheelchair is like travelling six inches off the ground - it’s great craic," laughs Cillian, who is no stranger to crashes during competition.

Getting to the high level of performance he displayed in winning five national senior gold medals has taken a huge degree of commitment as well as having a backroom support team on hand that includes two strength and conditioning coaches and a massage therapist.

Cillian trains seven days a week, spending three evenings in the gym and on top of that are four separate sessions on the athletics track in Templemore, covering distances of up to 15 kilometres on energy sapping speed and endurance work.

Cillian is looking forward to the all-in professional-like commitment now facing him.

He says: “We have decided to go hell for leather over the next three years in the run up to the Paralympics and see what happens. Winning the five gold medals in the nationals shows things are going in the right direction and all the training to date is paying off.”

A crucial stage to realising the targets of qualifying for the worlds and Paralympics will be for Cillian to secure a place on Ireland’s elite panel, and the superb form he is now showing would suggest that he is near reaching this more immediate goal.

“Sometimes getting on the elite panel can be harder that it is to qualify for the Paralympics, because there are only ten spots available in athletics,” says Larry, who adds that it would be great if they could secure corporate sponsorship to help fund the entire effort.

The timing couldn’t be better as Cillian now has more time to train as he has completed his studies and will graduate with an Honours Degree in Strength and Conditioning Coaching from LIT Thurles later this month. Larry also has more time to give to coaching his son as he retired from work after 41 years in the public service.

HUGE COMMITMENT

But training like a professional, especially when you do not have the proper resources behind you, can be daunting. “The commitment is huge and there are many days when you wake up tired in the morning and you just have to think about why you are doing it all,” says Cillian, who draws inspiration from the great support of his father, his mother Majella and 18-year-old sister Saoirse.

Cillian hopes to end his 2021 racing season on a high note when he lines out in an event in Carlow this Saturday and the following Saturday in Coventry. After that he will take about a fortnight to three weeks of a break before setting out on the hardest winter of training in his life.

To be with Cillian on his ambitious journey you can follow him on social media where he posts details of his race results and training schedules. Facebook: Cillian Dunne T54 Wheelchair Racer and Instagram: Cillian_Dunne_T54