On the pro road with a hill still to climb

Aidan Duff lives just 300 metres from the boyhood home of Stephen Roche in Dundrum. Later this month he returns to France and attempts to become the first new Irish cycling professional in over a decade.

The living room of the family home is littered with signs of his achievements. On the wall hang three photographs, three pictures which speak volumes. One shows a smiling Duff wearing the yellow jersey as leader of the 1994 Junior Tour of Ireland. Next to this, a picture of him being embraced by two team-mates following his historic win in the same race. Then there's the photo taken with the two former champions, Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. The past and, perhaps, the future of Irish cycling captured in one click of the camera.

The photographs emphasise three qualities of the rider from Dundrum. Success, an affable nature and having the talent to attract the right attention. The trophies say a lot, too.

They sit on shelves next to the fireplace. Peculiar-shaped things in strange colours. Garish in a manner that only the French could get away with. Put on proud display by his family, the trophies serve to remind why his room is empty nine months of the year.

But not now. The tall, dark haired cyclist returned to the small house in Dundrum last October to unwind. Soon the bags will be packed and he'll be off again. Back to the continent, to the team, to the grind of regular competition. Back to the rat-race which determines who makes it to the professional ranks and who slinks back home, with defeat etched on their faces and nothing in their pockets.

It's a hard life. A tough, lonely existence for a 21-year-old. But those in the know reckon he has the talent to succeed and that spurs him on. Especially when such people include Stephen Roche. When a former Tour de France winner says you've got the class - well, it helps a lot.

"He has the potential to win big races as an amateur," stated Roche last year. "And if he does that, a contract will almost certainly follow." In the young rider he sees many of the same things which made him a great champion; a smooth pedalling style, mental toughness, and the determination to succeed.

And when you combine these attributes with Duff's natural talent, you see Roche's point. Especially when you consider what he did in 1994. The junior tour is a week long stage event around Ireland, and is the biggest competition for under-18s in Europe. Having finished third a year earlier, Duff returned determined to leave his mark.

He did. Emphatically. He rode away from the field on the first day, crashed, and yet still had the time to remount and finish far ahead of the next rider. He took the second stage, too, and, most impressively, led the race from start to finish. A feat which has not been equalled before or since. Then he won the national 10 and 25-mile junior time trial championship, and finished in second place in the road race championship that same year. That turned heads. The lad had talent. The lad was going somewhere.

To France, to be exact. An offer came from the manager of a small team in Nantes. Duff was just 18, but his engineering course in Bolton Street didn't interest him enough to keep him here. He packed his bags, bade farewell to his parents and headed off into the unknown.

It was a tough existence. He hadn't a word of the language and floundered for the first few months. Besides, Pedale Nantoise was in the lower division of cycling teams and money was tight: two jerseys at the start of the year, and 1,000 francs a month was all the riders got. Thirty pounds to pay for a week's food, to finance whatever was needed to race successfully. They should have been able to count on their winnings, but in France the prizemoney goes to the federation and is only given back to the riders two or three times a year.

It's just as well he's such a laid-back character. It helped him stick it out when the going got tough, when others would have returned home with tails between well-muscled legs. He laughs about it now, but it must have been hard to see the funny side at the time.

"I remember once the manager . . . in France, they are mad into taking holidays for a month. Anyway, he buggered off on holidays without paying us. We were practically scraping stuff off the floor to eat."

Hard Times. But there was a job to be done and he set about doing it. As a foreign cyclist, he started the season as a third category rider, and needed to win a certain number of races to move up the ranks. Although he suffered bouts of sickness, probably due to the increased demands on his body, he did the business. By the end of the year he was first category, and had attracted the attention of a top team called Vendee-U. Stage one complete.

"For me it was like a dream to get into the team," he says. "It is probably the best in France, so I was prepared to make any sacrifice. It's run by former Tour de France rider Jean-Rene Bernaudeau, and it was very regimental and everything was the bike."

Regimental. Like being weighed every day, and having someone look over your shoulder at what you are eating. Oh yes, and obeying le metier. It means living the correct lifestyle, and is a code for riders to follow if they want to maximise their chances of turning pro. "Le metier means never going around without socks on, never going around in shorts, not walking around, never going to the seaside, not eating chocolate," says Duff.

He didn't rebel against the system. Although much of le metier is based on tradition, on old wives' tales, Duff didn't mind toeing the line if that improved his chances.

Don't walk around? He often didn't have the energy. "That's what I remember of the first half of the `96 season. Just lying on the bed and saying `oh God, I can't even walk'. I remember saying this to the manager, and he was going `no, no, this is normal'. I remember going to post a letter and I could hardly bloody move."

But it paid off. Duff had a great season. He won a number of races, including the Redon-Redon international, which last year became one of the French classics. And although he was the strongest rider in a threeday race, the Loire Atlantique, mechanical troubles conspired to cheat him of victory. Still, second place overall, third in the timetrial and winner of the under-23 jersey, that was compensation. His time would come the following year, he assured himself.

He came back to Ireland for the winter, determined to return even stronger. "The season I had in `96 was good," he says, with typical understatement. "I went over, there was no expectation put on me, and suddenly I had all this success. So the obvious thing for `97 was just to improve that bit more, and that's what I was aiming to do." A few more good results would line him up for a pro contract. Goal in sight.

He took only two weeks off between the end of that season and training for the next. Why walk when you can run? But his haste proved too much. A body which was already tired from the rigours of racing at the highest level did not get a chance to recover, and he started the 1997 season on his last legs.

"I arrived at the training camp with probably twice as many kilometres as anyone else," he recalls with a hint of regret. "I said `right, I'm going to kick some ass here'. But that wasn't the way it went at all."

He was in deep trouble.

"As the year went on, I wasn't getting any results. I just didn't seem to have the sparkle, that 10 per cent extra you need. I tried everything - altering the training, resting." Nothing worked. Even the Loire Atlantique, the race he had ridden so well in the previous year, returned nothing more than heartache.

He could have given up, gone back to Ireland. "I never thought about jacking it in,' he says defiantly. "I don't know why, but it just doesn't come to mind. Even this year, it has been a shit year, but it's all to easy to throw in the towel."

So he went about picking up the pieces. Offered a place on the Irish team to ride the under-23 World championships, he accepted. Not that he expected to perform well, but because it would provide valuable experience for 1998. When he crossed the line, he got off his bike and walked away, the hardest season of his life over. The bike went back to France, and he to Ireland. Good riddance.

"I was sick of the bike, probably the first time I have been in my life. I got back with all my mates and just forgot about it altogether. I went out and had a laugh. I didn't think about the bike at all. I didn't look at bike magazines or anything."

Then, after a month, something changed. His chronically tired body had got the rest it needed. It was a if the sun had come out from behind the clouds. Back on the bike, he started feeling fresh again. Rediscovered the talent that had been buried deep within by over-training.

Now he's getting ready for the 1998 season. He learned from his mistake and has been taking it far easier than he did a year ago. He's feeling much stronger for it. A recent test in a French sports lab bears proof - his power is up, his fitness is returning. The natural ability that first drew the attention of Stephen Roche has not deserted him.

Even after his difficult year, Roche continues to believe in the young rider. "I would still have a lot of confidence in Aidan," he said recently, "because he still has got age on his side. I would be surprised if he doesn't make it."

So, you feel, would Duff. "I think I have what it takes . . . I know I do," he asserts. "`It's just about trying to get everything right and bring it out. At the end of the day, I'm the only person who can do that."

He's still got his confidence. He knows what is needed this year. It's make or break time: he must get back to the winning ways. More garish French trophies are needed.

The gut feeling is that he will deliver.