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Katie-George Dunlevy and pilot Eve McCrystal. Tom Maher/INPHO

Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal win Paralympic silver in final race as duo

A special afternoon for two iconic Irish athletes at the Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.

LAST UPDATE | 1 Sep 2024

CYCLING LEGENDS KATIE-GEORGE Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal have won Irelandโ€™s second medal of the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, claiming silver in the Womenโ€™s 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 sheโ€™ll partner with Linda Kelly.

โ€œWhen youโ€™re so close to gold, youโ€™re slightly disappointed you didnโ€™t get it but weโ€™re absolutely ecstatic with silver,โ€ said pilot McCrystal. โ€œIt goes beyond what weโ€ฆ we knew we could do it but weโ€™re 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.

โ€œWhen the two of you are together, you constantly donโ€™t want to let each other down, so youโ€™re fighting every single day; thatโ€™s the fight for the last three years coming out, there, in a medal,โ€ McCrystal added.

โ€œWeโ€™ve always just trusted each other. Even with the collarbone, I was like, โ€˜Sheโ€™ll be back.โ€™ That doesnโ€™t faze me at all. Collarbone, whateverโ€ฆโ€

Dunlevy, who still has four pins and a plate in her collarbone, added: โ€œI didnโ€™t 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.

โ€œIโ€™ve had years of training behind me. Itโ€™s a matter of just getting the hours and the rehab in and I managed to. The collarbone is behind me now, even though itโ€™s still sore at times and it reminds me that itโ€™s 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.

โ€œWe 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, โ€˜Whatever will be, will be, as long as you just give your all.โ€™

โ€œMy dad is crying his eyes out,โ€ Dunlevy added. โ€œIt makes me very grateful to see my parents cry. I donโ€™t see them cry very often.โ€

katie-george-dunlevy-shares-a-hug-with-her-dad-john-after-finishing-2nd Dunlevy hugs her dad, John. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

katie-george-dunlevy-shares-a-hug-with-her-mother-alana-after-finishing-2nd ...and a hug for mum, Alana. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

Britainโ€™s 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.

Britainโ€™s 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 Irelandโ€™s silver medallists โ€” the countryโ€™s second of these Games after swimmer Rรณisรญn Nรญ Rรญain โ€” stressed that their performance proved an old adage about age.

โ€œFrom when my kids were bornโ€, said McCrystal, โ€œthey 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 canโ€™t put that into words. I am 46 years of age.โ€

โ€œWeโ€™re in our 40s and weโ€™re up against 20-year-olds,โ€ interjected Dunlevy. โ€œAge 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 menโ€™s 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.

martin-gordon-and-pilot-eoin-mullen Irelandโ€™s Martin Gordon and pilot Eoin Mullen. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

โ€œTo back up the national record this morning โ€” two and a half hours later, to go three tenths of a second slower, itโ€™s backed up, itโ€™s 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 โ€œbad crashโ€ on Monday and felt grateful that they were in shape to compete at all.

โ€œWe didnโ€™t know if weโ€™d be here at all today,โ€ Gordon said. โ€œOur 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.

โ€œIt 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 heโ€™d suffered a shoulder injury during the incident, which the Irish team tested out in a trial run as recently as Thursday.

โ€œIt held up, it wasnโ€™t perfect but it was enough to get us through,โ€ Mullen said.

โ€œWe can make excuses but at the end of the day, we donโ€™t 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.

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    Sep 17th 2019, 9:43 PM

    Manning to Tyree, one of the most iconic sporting moments of all time.

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    Sep 17th 2019, 10:04 PM

    @Michael Donnelly: no one to stop the Patriots having a undefeated season now.

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    Sep 17th 2019, 8:48 PM

    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

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    Sep 17th 2019, 9:02 PM

    @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!

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    Sep 17th 2019, 11:24 PM

    @Gavan Casey: whereโ€™s Steve gone Gavan? His input is sorely missed this time of year

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    Sep 17th 2019, 11:54 PM

    @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.

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    Sep 18th 2019, 12:05 AM

    @Gavan Casey: good man, cheers, Iโ€™ll look into it

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    Sep 18th 2019, 6:20 PM

    @Gavan Casey: have you watched the Giants for the past 5/6 seasons? He was done quite a while ago.

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    Sep 18th 2019, 6:27 PM

    @Mick Oโ€™Donoghue: also.. Winning QB gets SuperBowl MVP 60% of the time. They only DONโ€™T get it when they have a nightmare and someone else has an unquestionably amazing game.

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