SEAN KELLY IS one of the most Ireland’s most successful athletes, but his path through professional cycling might have looked very different if it hadn’t been for Hollywood legends Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
By the time Kelly called it a day on professional cycling in 1994, he was one of the most experienced riders out there. The Waterford native turned professional in 1977 and won 193 professional races before launching Ireland’s first professional cycling team in 2006: The An Post-Chain Reaction Team.
Before being a regular in the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana, however, Kelly was on course to compete in the Olympic Games, which could have kept him in amateur cycling for a lot longer.
It was during a race in 1975 in South Africa that he came across Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and his career took a sharp turn.
During the 1970s in South Africa, many sporting organisations decided to boycott all South African competitions, in protest against the ongoing apartheid.
One of the organisations imposing a ban was the world cycling governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), which meant that any cyclists competing in South Africa would be in very hot water.
While competing at home in the 1975 Tour of Ireland, 18-year-old Kelly met some Scottish cyclists who wanted to form a team for the Rapport Tour, the top race in South Africa at the time.
The plan was to compete in South Africa under false names, as part of a British team, as the Scottish riders had done the previous year. In a time before smartphones or the internet to catch the riders out, they were fairly confident that they could get through the race undetected.
At the time, Kelly was “pretty sure of going to the Olympics on the Irish team, in Montreal” a year later, and wanted to use the South African race as preparation. The riders were facing a long break without a race from September to the following March, and the October race in South Africa was the perfect chance to get valuable training in.
Kelly took the chance and went to South Africa along with the Tour of Ireland winner, Pat McQuaid, who later went on to serve as president of the UCI, and his brother Kieron. The three Irish riders joined the Scots John Curran and Henry Wilbraham to form the Mum for Men team, sponsored by a deodorant company.
“Yes we were aware of [the ban] before we went out but of course riding there as a British team and riding with false names, we never expected that anybody would know about it. But unfortunately, yes, that wasn’t the case”, said Kelly.
It seemed that that the British team had gotten away with it – making it to South Africa and starting the race without incident.
That was until the famous British actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton showed up.
The pair were after recently getting married for a second time, and were including a stopover in South Africa as part of their honeymoon.
Coincidentally, they landed in Outdshoom in the Western Cape just as the Rapport Tour was passing through.
A local reporter noticed that there was a British team taking part in the race, and looked to set up a publicity picture with the couple.
The team manager attempted to avoid the riders getting their picture taken, for obvious reasons, but in doing so piqued the interest of the reporter, who did some digging and uncovered the real identities of Kelly and the rest of the team.
Word got back to the riders’ home federations, where they were each banned for six months of the following season. Once the International Olympic Committee (IOC) found out, they duly banned the riders from the Olympic Games for life.
The ban had a huge impact on Kelly’s career, as once his Olympic hopes had crumbled, he “then decided to go to France to race with an amateur club, and that’s where [his] professional career took off”.
Kelly recalled that had he competed in the 1976 Olympic Games at that young age, he “might have done ok, finished maybe in the top 10 or 15 and decided to wait another four years and have a go.”
Your destiny maybe. Yeah, that’s the way it is.
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Interesting little article, cheers for that Eoin
I always wonder why Kelly and Roche two of our most successful athletes ever on the international stage don’t get the deserved attention. Very interesting article, thanks
Kelly gets plenty of plaudits. Roche on the other gets stick as he was blatantly doping. Admittedly, there’s serious question marks over whether Kelly was entirely clean either.
Neither of them should get stick as doping was par for the course at that time.
Half of baseball was on drugs in the last 20 years and most of them are still treated like heroes
In fairness Pauric, Sean Kelly was up to his eyeballs in drugs too in the 80s.
I think you should be careful about comments like that without any evidence to back it up… Sean Kelly was a super cyclist and a gentleman… I would suggest that you engage your brain before you open your mouth !!
I agree about Kelly. The evidence is there, sure he got caught in the 80s.
Without any evidence? Sure it’s common knowledge that Kelly tested positive twice in the 80s, for stimul which was a derivative of amphetamines. This, remember, was back in the day when you would want to have been an absolute clown to get caught such were the inadequacies in the testing system. Willy Voet, the Belgian masseur who worked with Kelly, wrote about him taking these on the very same race he got caught at – Paris-Brussels in 1983. He may be a gentleman and a cracking cyclist. Great commentator too. But he was riddled with drugs too Jim.
I’m not sure we’ve ever had another professional athlete who claim to have risen as high in their sport as Kelly. He was the number one ranked cyclist in the world for five years running and is generally considered to be the 5th best cyclist of all time.
Regardless of the drugs situation in cycling and whether Kelly was or was not involved, I would have thought the biggest issue in this case was the fact he went to South Africa at all. I have great respect for Kelly and even met him once, got his photo and his autograph but by going to South Africa at this time there seemed to be a complete void of social conscience. I suppose you could say the same for the two famous actors mentioned as well. Muhammad Ali he certainly wasn’t and after reading about Emile Griffith and his venture to South Africa, you could say Kelly didn’t really have a social conscience.
Neither Sean Kelly or the McQuaids were suspended for life. In fsct they were reinstated by the ICF in time to compete in Montreal but were prevented from doing so by the IOC. Pat McQuaid was a member of the IOC for a time in the 2000s and managed the Irish tesm st the LA Games in 1984 … so much for a lifetime suspension. Facts not alternative fscts …