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Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com
1.9K followers 89 following 3.2K posts

Reviewing cycling books and writing about professional cycling's mythological past and the reality behind the stories told and retold by cycling's duff historians cycologies.com 🇮🇪

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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 6h
Also: you'll never amount to anything as an author unless you're writing fiction. Which does rather overlook the large - very large - numbers of authors who write non-fiction.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 8h
Everyone is a writer now — but what does being a writer actually mean? Well apparently it means you're a "creative writer" and if you're not writing fiction you're not actually a writer.
rte.ie
Everyone is a writer now — but what does being a writer mean?
I've taught creative writing for years, in universities, writers' centres, libraries and festivals, online and in person, and the people who come to these courses are always wildly different.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 9h
Touché 😀
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 9h
Companies House will have to go after them as well, won't they, for all the accounting 'errors'/misstatements? It's the red tape that gets you in the end...
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 11h
Manchester City cheated Premier League rules, the Commission found. Did it also cheat HMRC? We've examined the decision and leaked Mancini documents. We think City likely failed to pay £12m in tax. There should be a criminal investigation. Thread:
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 22h
Don't weight the man down with expectations, Florian! “If he heads into the Tour well-prepared and in the form he’s in now, a stage win while wearing the rainbow jersey is certainly not out of the question.” A whole stage win!
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
Ineos - Tour Racing Ltd - accounts are in. Revenue of €54 million in 2025, down from €65 million in 2024.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
Ah, the Wisdom of Crowds comes up against the Stupidity of Reddit...
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
In Europe, but not part of Europe. Andy Burnham's going to have to fix this and promise a Brit in the Euros jersey before the next election.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
Three days later and people are still asking who the fuck is this guy who just became World Champion. Always a good sign...
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
Others are not so sure
Asked whether McNulty was a worthy rider to wear the rainbow jersey for the next year, Rasmussen did not dispute the legitimacy of his victory. Instead, he focused on the American’s standing compared with the biggest names in the peloton.

“He is simply not the star that the others are,” Rasmussen said. “He is not a rider who wins many races at the absolute highest level.”
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
AI is all in on Team McNulty...
An AI search response declaring McNulty is a completely worthy World Champion
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
As for the attendance at funerals...
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 30/09/2026
Ineos - Tour Racing Ltd - accounts are in. Revenue of €54 million in 2025, down from €65 million in 2024.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
The 1990s was such a run of carthorses winning the Worlds - Brochard, Leblanc, Dhaenens - we actually had a pretty good run of thoroughbreds winning this century, with just Vainšteins and Astarloa blotting the copybook across a quarter of a century.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
I wouldn't judge the women by the same standards I'm judging the men, TBH (and doubtlessly there are those who would say I shouldn't judge the men by those standards anyway). As you say, wins like Kiesenhofer's stand out for the way the race was won.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
The 1990s was such a run of carthorses winning the Worlds - Brochard, Leblanc, Dhaenens - we actually had a pretty good run of thoroughbreds winning this century, with just Vainšteins and Astarloa blotting the copybook across a quarter of a century.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Cause of that handbags-at-dawn 'fight' with Barredo?
Rui Costa and Carlos Barredo fighting at the end of a Tour stage in 2010
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
What would *you* be willing to do for 25 grand for two years? RTÉ could make one of those 'embarrass yourself' reality shows with that as the pitch...
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
They couldn't take the Flèche away from him...makes him a worthy winner. Also, IIRC, Americans of his era were taught by 7-Eleven that Laigueglia was a real Classic. 😉
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Yeah, I did wonder, but I think winning Flanders and the Worlds keeps him off the list. But he'd be in the reserves for it, yes?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Only the best of the best get to wear the Rainbow Stripes. Plus, every few years, guys like Romāns Vainšteins 🇱🇻 and others we've long since forgotten or prefer not to remember. Someone should actually produce a listicle of the least worthy wearers of the rainbow jumper.
Romāns Vainšteins in his rainbow jersey and a bandana and his Vini Caldirola kit, riding the Giro di Lombardia in 2000.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Getting something similar on Gallica all the time these days. After about ten clicks you just get booted out with a "too many requests" message. I understand it's not their fault, but it's still frustrating.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Now THIS is sport-washing. If the GAA had any morals the three clubs would reject the money and tell the Tech Bro billionaire to rehab his reputation elsewhere. #SpeirGorm
rte.ie
Zuckerberg donates €150,000 to three Waterford GAA clubs
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated €150,000 to the three GAA clubs which are located closest to Strancally Castle in Co Waterford.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Wondering if it'd make a curious cyclo-tourism read, maybe as part of a bit of a binge of other FWW books where the authors cycle the front (your own, that Nigel Bruce one etc).
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Teams are living, on-going entities. Large, painful punishments - point deductions, transfer bans - will hurt a team into the future and do more damage than symbolically stripping titles. There is no point in pretending that some other team won the titles Man City won. Cycling proves that.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Re the Man City case and potential punishment. I really do hope that football learns from cycling that taking away victories is, ultimately, pretty pointless. Yes, it may have been the only way for cycling to punish a rider. But punishing a team? It's not the only way.
Now that the charges have been proved, the issue of sanction will be addressed separately in a further hearing with the independent Commission. In accordance with Premier League rules, that hearing will remain private and confidential until such a time as publication of the outcome is permitted.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
The problem with both is that they bring bad news to their individual sports. Ok, the NBA can shake that off, that's Americans for you. The Premier League? The bad PR is going to linger. Would the UCI have the courage to face such bad press by publicly prosecute someone breaking spending rules?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Yes, in both of those cases the guilty have been caught. But have all the guilty been caught?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
The recent case of Steve Ballmer in the NBA and the current Man City case with the EPL should be a lesson to all in cycling who think salary caps or any other kind of spending rules are going to be a panacea. Both cases demonstrate how easy it is to circumvent spending rules using third parties.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Ok FWW peeps. Not a war buff in general, but this is going for a fiver. Should I? Described as a "walking, cycling and driving guide to the principal British battles of 1915 on the Western Front".
The Battles of French Flanders, by Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Not good Tour prep, by any standard. But still he made the Tour. He crashed a couple times, without crocking any bones. Made it through the Alps. Began to dream of breaking away maybe on the road to Bordeaux. Only to throw a wobbly in the Pyrénées + quit, blaming a broken pump + mean foreigners.
Charlie Holland at the Tour
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Holland had only just turned pro a couple months before the Tour, in May. In his first pro outing, the Wembley Six at the Empire Pool (today's Ovo), he crocked his collar bone. While recovering from that, he went for a walk in the woods, tripped, fell, and crocked his collarbone again.
Holland in Wembley
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
On June 30, 1937, Charlie Holland - Tom Holland's great uncle but I'm not telling you which Tom Holland - took the line at the Tour de France thinking he and Bill Burl were the first Brits to do so.
Josephine Baker offers her flowers to the Tour’s first British entrants, Bill Burl and Charles Holland (with the 65 bike number)
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
Yeats and the occult @juliansimpson.bsky.social ... do you know any podcasters who'd get a kick out of that? I can't begin to imagine what Dr Peck would call it.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 29/09/2026
"And he causes all [who wear the Pervert Glasses], the small and the great, the rich and the poor, and the free and the slaves, to be given a mark on their temple, the Mark of the Beast [Zuckerberg]." Book of Revelation 13:16-17
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 28/09/2026
Meet in the middle: irresolvable. It's the un- that makes unsolvable feel wrong (IMO).
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 28/09/2026
I know that what's happening in Drumcree is no laughing matter but you have to admire the ability to turn everything into a seisiún #SpeirGorm
Protesters on the Gervaghy Road sitting in camp chairs.Protesters on the Gervaghy Road with a guitar, fiddle and bodhrán
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 28/09/2026
Do the UCI issue visas now?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 27/09/2026
So speaks someone who's never had the builders in 🙂
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 24/09/2026
Condolences @bikesnbukes.eurosky.social. So sorry for your loss.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 23/09/2026
Hollywood here I come!
rivieraradio.mc
Cyclists wanted in Nice for new film starring Natalie Portman and Jonathan Bailey | Riviera Radio
Cyclists from across the Côte d’Azur are being invited to apply as extras for Pumping Black, a new film starring Natalie Portman and Jonathan Bailey.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 21/09/2026
Every discipline has at least one bad historian to hate on, doesn't it?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 19/09/2026
Kinda glad I didn't find any Black cyclists on it, certainly before 1882, as that keeps Albert Pearce and Charlie Rose in the running for "first/one of the first" status.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 19/09/2026
Yeah, the impression I get is African here means Black. This Tom Tully was the 1890s one. In 1893 he fought a kangaroo in Lowreys Music Hall in Dublin, now the Olympia Theatre, I think you have your six foot lady fighter - sorry, forgotten her name - appearing there when it was the Empire.
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 19/09/2026
Not sure if you've seen this @oispooky.bsky.social but might be worth bookmarking. Hoped I might fight even one cyclist on it, got zip, but you might have better luck with boxers. Tom 'The Kangaroo Fighter' Tully and Peter Jackson are both on it.
africansinireland.com
Database – Africans in Ireland, 1578-1921
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 16/09/2026
"It's chocolate Santas, sir! Hundreds of them!" Kinder? This is cruel!
Kinder cholotate Christmas Santas in Tesco. Stacked four shelves high.
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Tom Isitt @tomisitt.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How did I not know about this??? It’s got my name written all over it. International bestseller, blockbuster movie (think Escape to Victory, but in bikes), merch, you name it. It might even be true, who knows?
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Feargal McKay @cycologies.com · 23/08/2026
The Godfather
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