LAST UPDATE | 1 Sep 2024
CYCLING LEGENDS KATIE-GEORGE Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal have won Irelandโs second medal of the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, claiming silver in the Womenโs B 3000m Individual Pursuit.
In their final race as a duo, Dunlevy and McCrystal clocked 3:21:315 to finish second behind Britain and repeat the silver they won in the same event at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
This one was a far more unlikely feat, however: Dunlevy, 42, required surgery after breaking her collarbone in May and has been sick this week in Paris as recently as this morning.
McCrystal, 46, will retire from cycling as an Irish Paralympic great, while Dunlevy will now turn her attention to two events on the road, where sheโll partner with Linda Kelly.
โWhen youโre so close to gold, youโre slightly disappointed you didnโt get it but weโre absolutely ecstatic with silver,โ said pilot McCrystal. โIt goes beyond what weโฆ we knew we could do it but weโre up against three British bikes. It lets a little bit of doubt creep in. Underneath it all we knew we could do it but you have to deliver it on the day.
โWhen the two of you are together, you constantly donโt want to let each other down, so youโre fighting every single day; thatโs the fight for the last three years coming out, there, in a medal,โ McCrystal added.
โWeโve always just trusted each other. Even with the collarbone, I was like, โSheโll be back.โ That doesnโt faze me at all. Collarbone, whateverโฆโ
Dunlevy, who still has four pins and a plate in her collarbone, added: โI didnโt want to use that as an excuse, really. I was just focused on trying to recover from that, get training and get ready for this.
โIโve had years of training behind me. Itโs a matter of just getting the hours and the rehab in and I managed to. The collarbone is behind me now, even though itโs still sore at times and it reminds me that itโs still there.
When it came to this, we just had to fight, and we are both just fighters. We have trained damn hard to get here. We have put so much time into this to get here.
โWe just have to really trust what we can do and the experience that we have, and just trust in ourselves and go for it. I always go, โWhatever will be, will be, as long as you just give your all.โ
โMy dad is crying his eyes out,โ Dunlevy added. โIt makes me very grateful to see my parents cry. I donโt see them cry very often.โ
Britainโs Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl, who earlier broke the world record as the fastest qualifiers, won this gold-medal showdown with just over two seconds to spare, but silver was a triumph for Dunlevy and McCrystal given their bumpy road to Paris.
Dunlevy and McCrystal poured it all out and led the race until the final three laps, by which point the incredible Unwin narrowed the gap and eventually overtook the Irish pair.
Britainโs world-record-breaking crew nailed their splits and timed their run to perfection. They trailed the Irish bike by 1.081 seconds after the first kilometre, and Dunlevy and McCrystal extended that advantage fractionally over the second.
But Unwin and Holl pressed hard over the last 1,000 metres to open up a lead of their own with a couple of laps remaining.
They finished in 3:19:149, just over two seconds clear of Dunlevy and McCrystal who had put so much into the first 2,500 metres in an effort to build an unassailable lead.
And Irelandโs silver medallists โ the countryโs second of these Games after swimmer Rรณisรญn Nรญ Rรญain โ stressed that their performance proved an old adage about age.
โFrom when my kids were bornโ, said McCrystal, โthey have seen me training in the kitchen in turbo trainers. Every single day. For all of them to see all of our hard work, that resilience, that determination; for them to see that and a medal, I canโt put that into words. I am 46 years of age.โ
โWeโre in our 40s and weโre up against 20-year-olds,โ interjected Dunlevy. โAge is a number.โ
Earlier, Martin Gordon and pilot Eoin Mullen overcame serious adversity earlier in the week to repeat their feat from Tokyo and finished fifth in the the final of the menโs B 1000m Time Trial.
Gordon and Mullen had earlier come home in a national-record 1:01.158 to finish as the fifth-fastest qualifiers, with six bikes making it through to the showpiece.
The Irish bike was fractionally slower in the final, recording a time of 1:01.520 to claim fifth.
โTo back up the national record this morning โ two and a half hours later, to go three tenths of a second slower, itโs backed up, itโs a good result and it shows a massive effort on our part,โ said Gordon, who went on to confirm that he and Mullen had suffered a โbad crashโ on Monday and felt grateful that they were in shape to compete at all.
โWe didnโt know if weโd be here at all today,โ Gordon said. โOur coaches, physios, doctors and mechanics got us on the start line today. Where we were on Monday, I would have taken your hand off to do what we just did today.
โIt was an unfortunate accident. One of the other nationsโ tandems had a blowout in front of us. They came down, left us with nowhere to go. It was just one of those freak accidents on an open track. We had to go over the top of them. We came down.โ
Pilot Mullen added that heโd suffered a shoulder injury during the incident, which the Irish team tested out in a trial run as recently as Thursday.
โIt held up, it wasnโt perfect but it was enough to get us through,โ Mullen said.
โWe can make excuses but at the end of the day, we donโt really need to.โ
โ Updated with quotes at 3:23pm
- With reporting from Emma Duffy at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome in Paris.
Manning to Tyree, one of the most iconic sporting moments of all time.
@Michael Donnelly: no one to stop the Patriots having a undefeated season now.
He was done years ago. Unreal how he managed (stole) those Superbowls when far more talented QBs have missed out on it during their careers
@Omar Elnoursi: He was MVP in both Super Bowls and and is the only QB in history to have played in more than one conference championship game and not throw an interception. Might have rode a few coattails to get there, but still made it happen once he got there!
@Gavan Casey: whereโs Steve gone Gavan? His input is sorely missed this time of year
@Baz: He just got a new job away from sports journalism about a year ago, Baz. He still chirps away about football on Twitter if you have it.
@Gavan Casey: good man, cheers, Iโll look into it
@Gavan Casey: have you watched the Giants for the past 5/6 seasons? He was done quite a while ago.
@Mick OโDonoghue: also.. Winning QB gets SuperBowl MVP 60% of the time. They only DONโT get it when they have a nightmare and someone else has an unquestionably amazing game.