Comeback queen: Mia on track to lead Ireland to the Olympics

A New Year means new goals, but for Kilkenny cyclist Mia Griffin the target she’s aiming for has five Olympic rings attached.

The Glenmore native may be gearing up for a major European track competition with Team Ireland at present, but the big one the national cycling organisation has set its sights on is a little further down the line - the 33rd Summer Olympiad in Paris this July and August.

“We will get to Paris,” she said with conviction. “It’s looking good for us. If we get there we want to do a good time, one that we can be proud of. I hope we can do that as we’ve put a lot of work into trying to go as fast as we can in a team pursuit.”

The confidence emanates from Griffin, who is currently preparing for the Track European Championships in the Netherlands.

However, what’s even more impressive is the way she has come back from a nightmare injury which threatened to derail her dreams.

After a busy start to 2023, Griffin’s season came to a shuddering halt when she crashed at the Paris-Roubaix road race in April, suffering a concussion which left her career hanging in the balance.

“It was about five months before I felt that everything was back to normal,” she said, recalling the after-effects. “Some days I couldn’t even get out of bed, never mind train. I was so tired from the concussion, I’d even get tired from just walking around. It was crazy to go from training and racing to having no energy for daily tasks. It was really scary.”

Competing at the Rás na mBan and in the Tour of Chongming Island in China helped finish what was a topsy-turvy year for the cyclist.

“I think it started as a year where I didn’t prioritise anything,” she said. “I wanted to do everything. When you try to do that you don’t do one thing well, so what I learned from that was to prioritise what I want to do and what races I feel I can do well in, as well as learning to say no to some things. You have to learn what’s important as you can’t do everything well; maybe I can’t do everything well, so it’s better to focus my energy on things I feel I can do well.

“My season started really early with the Tour Down Under in Australia in January, which was a good experience but I hadn’t built up the confidence to get the results I feel I’m capable of,” she said.

“After Australia I had a series of track races and tried to get in some road races in between.

Mia Griffin is hoping 2024 will deliver some big performances on the track. Picture: Sportsfile

Griffin highlighted a heavy schedule with more travel than training as a reason for her crashes.

“I probably crashed quite a bit as I was tired and maybe a little undertrained for the road racing,” she said.

“When you’re going full gas in a road race and things are getting technical in a bunch of 140 to 160 girls you’re putting yourself at risk. The speeds have been so high this year and racing in Belgium is dangerous so you’re already putting yourself at risk, but when you’re a bit more tired you tend to be in the middle of the bunch, which is where most of the crashes are.

Being a little tired and not as well positioned means you leave yourself in a more vulnerable position for crashing.”

The incident in Roubaix was the moment where Griffin’s year could have been cut short.

“My crash in Roubaix was quite scary,” she said, recalling the incident in April which would see Griffin miss months of her cycling season.

“I got back on my bike and finished the race. I started a race two days later but I felt too bad to finish - I got off my bike in the middle of that race as I felt too dizzy to continue.

“That crash had a knock-on effect for months afterwards as that concussion was so bad. It scared me, and made me think ‘this sport can be quite dangerous’. Hitting your head is something that needs to be taken very seriously.”

Griffin recalled the full incident of what happened that day with alarming clarity.

“There’s real urgency before the first cobble section at Roubaix as everyone is being told in their race radio that they need to be at the front, so everyone is trying to get to the front at the same time,” she said. “I was on the side of a bunch who were trying to move up and there was a girl who was nearly hitting the kerb, she was so close to the side of the road. She was trying to move up where there was no space and she hit another girl - I went over the top of them and landed on my head. I didn’t have a scrape anywhere else on my body. I just landed full force on my head.

Mia Griffin (centre) celebrates winning stage one of the Rás with Irish teammates Caoimhe O’Brien and Aoife O’Brien

Griffin would go on to complete the 145.4km race, becoming the first Irishwoman to compete in and finish the event when she crossed the line in 83rd place, but the real damage from her crash was yet to surface.

“I remember going for a coffee spin (recovery ride) the day after Roubaix and I was in such a bad way,” she recalled.

“Then I raced the day after (in the Ronde de Mouscron) and although my legs felt great my head couldn’t process what was going on in the race.

“I had blurred vision, while for months after the crash I suffered problems with my peripheral vision, where I’d get awful dizziness when things were moving around me. I was lucky that I had my team-mate Alice (Sharpe) with me as she could tell what was going on, so she told me to pull out of the race.”

Little did she know it, but it would be some time before Griffin would be back in a race again. She spent the first spell of her recovery at her base in Switzerland as her team Israel Premier Tech Roland had planned for her to race La Vuelta in Spain, but it wasn’t long before she made the decision to come home to continue her recovery.

“I was still trying to do an hour’s training here and there,” she said. “I thought I was going to be ok, but I felt really bad on the bike - I couldn’t do more than an hour on the turbo. I came back to Ireland after that and spent a few months here trying to recover.”

With no specific timeframe for her recovery, Griffin was left in limbo with regards to her future.

“In that sense it was the most difficult injury I’ve ever suffered,” she said. “I’ve had broken shoulders and other such injuries and they’re a walk in the park compared to the concussion as I could train through them. With this I couldn’t train and didn’t have any quality of life. At one stage I thought that maybe I wouldn’t even cycle again.”

Having worked with the Sports Institute in Ireland Griffin went to a clinic in Switzerland for vestibulo-ocular work to help retrain her eyes and inner ear.

“I was so tired after that,” she said, “but after that I felt able to train again.

The recovery was a long road but, once she was back she was quickly into the thick of things!

“I did two races in Belgium, back-to-back, one day after the other,” she said. “The staff from the Institute were like ‘are you sure about this?’ but I was determined to get back. I was absolutely swinging in the races - in one event my heart rate was 185 for three hours as I was so unfit after so many months without proper training. I was anxious going back into the bunch as I didn’t want to fall again, but it took me until the third race back to get over that. By the time the Rás came around my confidence was back.

“The Rás went really well for me,” she added. “I had the confidence that I could deliver some good results.”

Saying the Rás went well was a slight understatement, as Griffin helped herself to two stage wins in Callan and Tramore.

“It was really cool to win in Callan,” she said. “I knew that if I came into the last corner in a good position I could win from there. I was first into the corner, and even though it was a long draggy sprint that was perfect for me.”

The wins were the reward for her comeback, giving Griffin an added charge for her remaining races.

“The big thing I took from the Rás was that, having come back from injury, it gave me such hunger,” she said. “I brought that all the way into the rest of the season.”

The wins in the Rás set Griffin up for a solid run of results through the rest of 2023. She finished 46th overall in the Tour of Chongming Island in China in October, starting with an eighth place finish in the opening 108.9km stage. She was 57th in stage two, which was 128.6km, before completing the final 112.3km stage in 61st place.

“All the track racing was over at that stage so I could focus on the road,” she said. “My two goals for that part of the season were the Rás and China. I was able to work with my coach and train for those events without the clutter I had at the start of the year.”

For now Griffin is focused on the European Track Championships, which will be held in the Netherlands from January 10 to 14.

Part of a five-strong team with Lara Gillespie, Alice Sharpe, Kelly Murphy and Erin Creighton, Griffin is hoping Ireland can build on 2023’s strong performances where they broke the team pursuit national record multiple times.

The European Championships are a key qualification event with other UCI Nations Cup rounds in Adelaide, Hong Kong and Milton before qualification for track cycling at the games concludes in April. With Ireland currently ninth in women’s team pursuit qualifying, the top 10 teams at the end of qualification will earn a spot in the team pursuit event as well as places in the omnium and madison events in Paris. Ireland have also been awarded a place in the women’s road race in Paris, giving the country another platform.

“There will be a good fight for that road spot in Paris,” she said. “Over the last few years we have had some good performances and that belief brings better results. We are starting to create pathways which will hopefully lead to better things for the future.”

It promises to be a busy year, but for Mia Griffin it could be unforgettable.