I read an article recently on the excellent BackPageFootball.com on how pressure from fans and media can become overwhelming  for a young athlete and can eventually ruin their career. Sebastian Deisler was a German footballer who was pegged as ‘the next Franz Beckenbauer’. He had to live and play with the tag of being the saviour of German football from a very young age. Despite this pressure and a string of injuries he made it from Borussia Monchengladbach via Hertha Berlin all the way to Bayern Munich. However, at Bayern the injuries persisted and he never quite lived up to his promise. He was earmarked to lead Germany to World Cup glory on home soil in 2006 but he missed the tournament, again through injury. He struggled to cope with the immense pressure exerted on him and was eventually diagnosed with depression. He retired from football completely in 2007 saying: ~ Continue reading ~

Usually when it comes to writing a blog post on Irish Peloton I know what I’m going to write before I sit down and write it. I’ll have thought of a topic a couple of days beforehand, mulled it over during the commute into town or while out on a spin or while simply daydreaming at my desk, then I’ll write it relatively quickly. All that’s left to do then is to trawl through the cycling news archives and the cycling quotient site to verify a few stats and facts. But in general I’ll usually have a post fully mentally prepared so I can just spew it out when the time comes. I’m just back from a three hour spin over the Sally Gap and I still have no idea how to tackle the monster that is the Floyd Landis scandal. ~ Continue reading ~