The Kanchi Blog

Posted on

10th September 2012

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Mark Rohan secured Ireland’s seventh gold medal of the London2012 Paralympic Games by winning the Men’s Individual Road Race H1 at Brands Hatch on Friday .

Rohan clocked a time of 1:53.09 to take the gold by a narrow 2 second margin over Swiss cyclist Tobias Fankhauser (1:53.11). Austria’s Wolfgang Schattauer took the bronze with a time of 1:53.24.

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Mark Rohan, the 31 year old Westmeath hero, took home Ireland’s sixth gold medal yesterday in the Men’s H1 Individual Time Trial at Brands Hatch with an astounding time of 35:41.54, just 11 seconds ahead of his rival Koby Lion of Israel (35:53.30).
After the event Rohan commented “I am delighted with my result, there was a lot of pressure on me to perform today.”

In July Rohan was blessed to become one of two athletes’ in Ireland to receive a scholarship deal from Sky Sports, with the second athlete being Katie Taylor. Rohan was paralysed from the chest down after a terrible motor cycle accident in 2011 but that didn’t stop Mark from becoming one of the most well-known and successful Paralympic athletes in Ireland with an impressive season last year as he won six World Cup events in a row in 2011’s UCI Paracycling World Cup series. These wins earned him the International Paralympic Committee’s Athlete of the Month for September 2011.

Mark is a very down to earth person with the belief that what you put into sport is what you will get out of it, and with a gruelling six day week training schedule there is no wonder why Rohan has lived up to that expectation as he has worked extremely hard day in, day out to achieve his success.