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‘I felt it and heard it, it was pretty loud bang. I looked down and my leg was pretty loose’
‘I felt it and heard it, it was pretty loud bang. I looked down and my leg was pretty loose’’s downhill world championships last September but his odds of repeating the performance on Saturday are in doubt due to a double leg fracture he suffered in April.rider fractured two bones in his lower leg in a freak accident and only returned to competition last week in the Les Gets World Cup, where he finished 29th.
“The race went well. I wasn’t planning on racing at all from the beginning, just planning on doing practice day, but was really happy to make qualifying and race finals,” he said.
“I definitely held back quite a lot as I cannot afford to take a crash on the course. Tadej Pogacar sprints past rivals but Enric Mas makes him sweat for Vuelta stage six winIrish cyclist turning pro pays tribute to brother killed in training crashDunne is a double World Cup winner and looked to be in fine shape starting the season, taking second in the Red Bull Hardline event in Tasmania in February.
However, he had a bizarre accident in France at the start of April, putting his foot down momentarily while speeding down a descent.
“I was in a turn, and went to dab my foot,” he said. “We dab feet quite a lot in mountain biking to prevent crashing. This one just got my foot stuck between the ground and my pedal. And then my leg just twisted and broke.
“I never came off the bike, which was quite nice but then also a bit weird. Because you didn’t crash you weren’t really expecting anything bad to happen. But I felt it and heard it, it was pretty loud bang. I looked down and my leg was pretty loose.
” The sudden impact fractured both his tibia and fibula, the large and small bones in the lower leg. He required surgery and the fractures were stabilised with a rod.
However, he had a setback in June when he slipped while out on his bike.
“I literally just slipped on my ass, nothing big, but it twisted my leg and that made it super sore,” he said. That put him back on crutches for several days and also necessitated a lot of physio work when his ankle became very sore. Dunne races with the Mondraker Factory Racing team but has also been a Red Bull-sponsored athlete.
The latter backing enabled him to spend blocks of time at its performance centre in Austria, where his recovery accelerated and enabled him to gradually return to training. That in turn helped him meet his target of getting back to competition in Les Gets, and means he will be able to compete in the world championships in Val di Sole in Trentino, Italy, this week.
Dunne, Oisín O’Callaghan and Henry Kerr will line out in the qualification session on Friday and, all going well, the finals on Saturday. The Irish downhill team is completed by junior riders Niamh Richards, Kevin Randall and Darragh Ryan. While Dunne would love to medal again, he admits he will take the same cautious approach as he did in Les Gets. His bones are not fully healed and so crashing is not an option.
“It’s a brutal track. It’s probably one of the roughest,” he said.
“I did some training on it and it is very physical, rocky. I was in quite a bit of pain throughout the run. Still, he’s fortunate that there are still some big races to target after the worlds. There is a four-week gap and then World Cup races in British Columbia and New York.
The season then ends with the Red Bull Hardline race in Vancouver. He believes the extra time to prepare for those races should make “a huge difference” to his form, and raises his hopes he will be properly competitive.
“I could maybe see myself being on the cards for a podium,” he said of the Hardline event. “I’ve got a podium with every single one, and I’ve won two of them. So it’d be nice to get a podium and end the season strong.
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