It has been a busy few weeks for 14-year-old Oisin O’Callaghan who hails from Ardpatrick in Co Limerick.
Oisin won the Irish Downhill National title in Northern Ireland as well as Round 2 of the Irish downhill series in Wexford on the 12th August.
As if that wasn’t enough, he travelled to Llangollen in Wales to win Round 4 of the British Downhill Series, in which he beat the current English champion by 1.7 secs in a very tight aggressive race.
A hugely popular sport in the UK, this has been a great few weeks for Oisin as it is very seldom any Irish racer wins in this extremely competitive discipline, dominated by teenagers in England, Wales and Scotland.
Oisin’s dad Chris explained to us, the ins and outs of the sport: “For Downhill Racing, you practice on a specific marked out track on a Saturday and Sunday morning where the trick is, to try and find the maximum speed and to get down the track in the fastest time with a series of corners, jumps and technical sections. IOt is not too unlike super G Downhill skiing in the winter. The difference between winning and losing can be as little as one thousandth of a second.”
The next race is this weekend in Mount Hillary near Kanturk (Sept 2/3) with the last British Downhill race in Hopton Woods, Shrewsbury, England on Sept 16th/17th and the last Irish race of the season in Carrick Wicklow in late September.
