Katie-George Dunlevy has claimed a third successive women’s B individual time-trial Paralympic gold medal after a stunning ride in Clichy-sous-Bois on Wednesday afternoon.
It is Ireland’s first gold of these Games, taking the team’s total medal haul to five – sitting alongside two silver and two bronze.
Dunlevy, the B individual time-trial Paralympic champion in both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021 when Eve McCrystal was her partner on the bike, retained her crown on the outskirts of Paris, but this time with Linda Kelly as pilot over the 28.3km course. Dunlevy’s three-in-a-row dominance of the discipline spans eight years.
It is the 42-year-old’s seventh Paralympic medal and her second of these Games. It is also the first time she has claimed a medal without McCrystal as her tandem partner.
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Dunlevy and Kelly entered Wednesday’s race as reigning world champions in the discipline having won the time-trial title in Scotland in August 2023.
But the Irish duo were actually 10.95 seconds adrift of Britain’s Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holly at the first split (5.8km) here. However, they delivered a race-defining second sector to surge ahead at the top of the leaderboard – by the halfway mark (14.1km) they led by 40.35 seconds.
The gap was pushed out to 46.88 seconds after 19.9km and at the finish they had put 1:23.60 seconds of a gap back to the British duo. Dunlevy and Kelly came home in 38:16.58 to win gold with Unwin and Holly finishing second in 39:40.18
Unwin and Holly had beaten Dunlevy and McCrystal in the final of the B 3,000m individual pursuit at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Vélodrome on Sunday.
That silver was the sixth Paralympic medal collected by Dunlevy and McCrystal as a tandem. Their previous Paralympic appearances had produced two gold medals and one silver in Tokyo, plus one gold and one silver in Rio.
McCrystal has stepped back on her commitments to road racing this season, but she still raced in Wednesday’s time trial in Clichy-sous-Bois where she was on the bike alongside Josephine Healion instead.
The pair finished fifth in a time of 41:57.61.
When asked could she put into words how she was feeling, Dunlevy said: “Pain is the word!”
“It was a really, really challenging course. Really technical. I thought we were going to come off a few times but that’s racing for you. You’re on the limit. We knew the course suited us, the uphill sections suited us so we had to really go over on our power on those hill parts because that was where we’d get time on the other bikes and I think we delivered a really good ride.
“Even on the second lap we were able to push out big power on those hills. When we heard we were down on the first lap I thought ‘keep going, just keep going’.
“I’ve been in many races where it’s not over ‘til you cross that line so you’ve just got to keep going and just hope the other bikes maybe fade. You’ve just got to keep strong, keep racing, keep believing, just keep racing to that finish line.
“When I heard we were up I was just trying to relax and push and feel what Linda was doing in front and just try and be as aero [dynamic] as I could be behind her, tucked in. I’m just so proud of her. We had pressure on us. I was trying to retain my title from Tokyo, she knew that.
“Linda came on board last year and she’s done so well with so much pressure on her today to deliver but I believed in her, believed in every pedal stroke. She had concussion in May so had time off the bike. She had a lot of challenges this year, we both did so for us to come away with the win, I’m just very emotional now. I can’t quite believe this.”
On how she felt becoming Olympic champion, Kelly said: “It’s magic, it’s just like a dream. I can’t believe it. It’s going to take a while to sink in. I’m just so happy. We both put the work in, it’s been a rollercoaster of a year with Katie’s collarbone and my concussion.
“I’m just so proud of Katie; how she recovered from the broken collarbone. She put the work in. She wanted to be here. She just wanted to win. We both had the same ambition. I’m absolutely thrilled, just over the moon.”
Earlier, in the men’s C4 individual time-trial, Ronan Grimes finished eighth in a time of 39:01.83, just over two minutes and 15 seconds behind gold medallist Kevin le Cunff of France.
In the men’s B individual time-trial, Damien Vereker and pilot Mitchell McLaughlin finished seventh, clocking 36:31.09.
