'It was insane': A look back at the Euro triathlon championships in Athlone

As he cast his mind back to Athlone's hosting of the European Triathlon Championships a decade ago, Liam Heavin searched for the right word to sum up his feelings. He eventually settled on the adjective that seemed to fit best: Insane.

"It was insane... let's call a spade a spade!" said Liam.

"To try to bring a European championships to Athlone, to try and bring in 4,500 athletes... That was an insane idea, and it couldn't have been carried out if it wasn't for some pretty crazy people who thought it was a good idea as well."

The Athlone native was one of the main movers behind the event, which brought thousands of local spectators onto the streets to watch Europe's elite athletes swim, cycle and run through local terrain in the first weekend of July 2010.

Over the last several decades, a number of local sporting landmarks immediately stand out. Athlone Town playing AC Milan. Westmeath winning the Leinster championship. Robbie Henshaw starring for Ireland. The successes of Joe Ward and Mark Rohan on the world stage.

The hosting of an elite European sporting championships in the town arguably deserves a prominent place on that list also, especially given the calibre of the participants and what they went on to achieve.

It was described in the Westmeath Independent as Athlone's "biggest-ever sporting event" and the town's Chamber of Commerce estimated it was worth €9 million to the local economy, at a time when the country's finances were in a perilous state.

Britain's Alistair Brownlee, who was cheered by a large crowd on Church Street as he passed the finish line to take gold in the men's race, went on to win gold medals at the Olympics in both 2012 and 2016. In the women's race, Switzerland's Nicola Spirig took gold in Athlone and would claim gold and silver medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics respectively.

In fact, five of the six Olympic medallists in the men's and women's triathlon events in London 2012 had competed here two summers earlier.

"It's hard to imagine what else we could run in Athlone, as a sport, with athletes of that level taking part," commented Liam.

Bringing the event to the town was fraught with challenges and headaches, however, particularly around finances and logistics.

It all began in the mid-2000s when Liam and two others, Hugh McAtamney of Triathlon Ireland, and triathlon swim coach John Causey, started drawing up plans to run a significant annual triathlon.

"Triathlon would have been a marginal sport in Ireland in the '90s and '00s," said Liam. "Our thought process was that if we wanted to bring more people into the sport, and develop elite athletes, we needed a showcase."

The original idea was to stage the annual event in Dublin, but it soon became clear that the road closures that would have been needed, around the River Liffey, were an impossibility.

"Since I was from Athlone, I said why don't we look at Athlone?" recalled Liam.

He and his Dad called to see the late John Walsh, who was then the Town Clerk at Athlone Town Council, and the wheels were soon in motion for the first annual triathlon in the town in 2006.

"In our first year, we had just under 500 people taking part, and that was the biggest triathlon that had ever been held in Ireland," said Liam.

After a 'test event' the following year, which was also the Irish national championships, a bid was submitted for Athlone to host the European championships. It succeeded on the basis that the town would first host two European Cup events, in 2008 and 2009.

"By 2009, we had grown to 2,500 participants, which was simply unbelievable," said Liam.

The increasing number of participants also meant more extensive road closures, which proved unpopular with some local residents and businesses.

Liam said he understood people's frustration and admitted the event became more disruptive - in terms of road closures - than he had originally anticipated.

"To be honest, I don't think I fully understood the extent of it at the start. Nobody did," he said. "Triathlon is a sport that was on a massive upward trajectory in the 2000s, not just in Ireland but across Europe.

"The biggest (triathlon) race in Europe was and still is in Hamburg, but I was in Hamburg in 2008 and they had 2,500 people participating, which is what we had in 2009. But Hamburg is a big city, and it can absorb road closures much better than a town with two bridges.

"We were definitely learning on our feet and we would have said things at the start, about how imposing the event would have been, that turned out to be untrue. We weren't trying to deceive - we just didn't know.

"I think to be fair to everybody in the town, once they got over the novelty of the first couple of years, it started to become a bit of a pain in the neck."

In the lead-up to the European championships in 2010, Ireland's economic troubles started to impact on the event. RTE had been expected to provide live coverage of the triathlon, but budget constraints resulted in the broadcaster pulling out.

"That was a disaster," recalled Liam. "The original budget for the live TV was significant - it was six figures."

Even though RTE were no longer on board, Liam and the organisers were still contractually obliged to supply television coverage of the event.

They ended up paying a TV production company over €50,000 to provide a highlights package, which was then shown on RTE for an hour on the Sunday evening of the European championships weekend, and was also distributed around Europe.

"We had to give (the highlights package) out for free distribution, but we had to pay for it," said Liam.

"It was an absolute nightmare, and it wasn't like I could ring up a journalist and (complain about RTE) because we needed them to show the programme! The TV package was a fantastic piece of advertising for Athlone and had a viewership of over a million people, worldwide, in the end."

Then-TD Mary O'Rourke was a major help in sourcing some funding, towards the TV costs, from Fáilte Ireland, and there was also significant funding towards the event from Waterways Ireland and the council.

In addition, he pointed out that the European championships couldn't have happened here if not for the support and assistance of the Gardai and the Defence Forces, which allowed Custume Barracks to be used to help facilitate the event.

"There would have been no European championships without the Defence Forces," he stated. "People from all over Europe were coming to Ireland for a race that was based around Custume Barracks. And they loved it - they lapped it up."

As chairman of the organising committee, Liam put the team in place to run the event, which included the likes of Hugh McAtamney, Rosemary Shields, Ronan Keogh, John Causey, Derek Nugent, and the late Pat Coyle.

On the weekend itself, despite all the activity, Liam had time to walk through the town and take it all in.

"I got to walk among the crowds, with a bit of 'firefighting' to be done here and there. We had various crises that needed to be handled, and I remember all of it."

He said the "outrageous" quality of the field in the elite races, and the reception for Alistair Brownlee as he took the European crown, were among the highlights of the weekend.

Brownlee, whose brother Jonny, another future Olympic medallist, also competed in Athlone, spoke glowingly of the reception he received here. "That was probably the biggest number of high-fives I've ever done coming into the finishing straight. It was great," said the then 22-year-old.

After losing money in 2010, the triathlon in Athlone continued with lower profile events, to help pay back its losses, in 2011 and 2012.

Liam, a founder of DBC Chartered Physiotherapy & Sports Medicine, which has one its premises in the Arcadia Retail Park, remained involved with the annual event until 2015.

"I stayed involved for a couple more years but the event was gradually beginning to reduce in terms of the numbers. A lot more events came on the calendar and people wanted different races, and different experiences, which is perfectly understandable," he said.

He felt the hosting of a European triathlon championships in Athlone would be even more difficult to accomplish today.

"The sport has gone on so much since then. As expensive as it was to run at the time, it would probably cost more than double to do it now," he said.

"We ran the first ever para-triathlon European championships, and we ran the first team relay European championships (in 2010)... those events are now massive on their own."

He said that, despite the long hours and stresses involved in helping to organise the event, he was glad to have helped bring it to fruition.

"I don't regret it. Absolutely not. Sometimes the craziest ideas are the best ones. If I had my time back I'd do lots of things differently, and better," he said.

"Athlone has always been a tourist town and I'd like to think we added to that. The triathlon each year is still a focal event.

"It's not on the same scale but it's a great event, an unbelievable location, and it's one of the very few places where you can partake in something like this in a town the size of Athlone.

"When we started it there was no triathlon club in Athlone, but there is now, and there's lots of people who have been introduced to the sport and have travelled all over the world (for various events) as a result.

"They say everything has its time and place, and I think that was its time and place, but hopefully the event continues, in whatever shape or form, in Athlone into the future," he concluded.