The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for September: Katie-George Dunlevy and Linda Kelly (Paracycling)
Fleeting as they were, there were moments in this Paralympic and World Championship year when Katie-George Dunlevy wondered if it just wasn’t meant to be for her and her pilot Linda Kelly, the pair suffering so many injury and illness setbacks that Paris and Zurich were beginning to feel like very distant dreams.
In early May, the pair crashed during a World Cup race in Belgium, Dunlevy left badly bruised and with an injured hand, but Kelly sustained a concussion that ruled her out of action for a spell.
So Eve McCrystal stepped in to pilot Dunlevy in another World Cup race in Italy 10 days later. And they crashed. But with Paralympic qualifying points at stake, the pair got back on their bike and managed a fourth-place finish despite Dunlevy being in agony. It was only later when she was X-rayed that she learned she had broken her collarbone.
“So I’m lying there in my hospital bed in Italy thinking, ‘I’m gonna be in Paris, I’m gonna be in Paris’. That’s really all that was going through my head. Of course I worried that I wouldn’t make it, but I could have broken my legs, I could have broken my hip, and that would have been the end of it. But I just kept telling myself, ‘it’s only your collarbone, it’ll be fine’.”
She flew back to Dublin, had her operation, and six days later was back on her bike, albeit using just the one arm. “Up and at it,” she says. She’s not the most decorated Irish Paralympic athlete of all for nothing. A warrior.
That was only the half of it, though. In all, Dunlevy and Kelly had five crashes through the year when the last one Dunlevy could remember she was involved in was in 2016. Kelly had Covid twice, and also had to endure a leg infection. Dunlevy had an arm infection, and, on the eve of the Paralympics picked up a virus that left her in bed in the athletes’ village for three days. And just before the World Championships she tested positive for Covid.
So, apart from September, when you won Paralympic gold with Linda, Paralympic silvers with Linda and Eve, and two World Championship golds with Linda, the year was a write-off?
“It was, yeah,” she laughs. “But you know, I’ve had many challenges growing up and had lots of knock-backs, and I’ve been learning to live with sight loss all my life, so I think that just made me very resilient. A broken collarbone and illness? I was like, ‘oh, I’ve gone through much worse than this’.”
“And Linda had huge challenges this year too, mentally it was really tough for her as well. We were both going through really times, but we had to be there for each other and support each other, which we did. She’s a great girl, she’s lovely, and she’s such a brilliant racer as well.”
“But that’s the life, you go through so much. I have given everything to my sport, I’ve dedicated my life to it and lost out on so many different things. But no regrets. None. When you stand on that top step of the podium, it makes everything worth it. It’s the best feeling. You forget about all the bad times, the injuries, the illnesses, the days you were so tired you didn’t want to go training. All of it. It just melts away.”
Her success with Kelly in 2024 has been remarkable, Dunlevy paying tribute to the Wexford woman’s contribution to a medal-laden year, but there was a poignancy to her teaming up again with her long-time partner McCrystal for the B 3,000m individual pursuit in Paris. It was McCrystal’s last Paralympics, so it was to be their final race together after a decade of unrelenting success.
“It was always going to be an emotional day for us both, but when it comes to racing you have to blank everything out and focus on what you’re doing. I’m very much ‘blinkers on’ and Eve is too. We didn’t really think about it all until afterwards, but getting silver that day made it so special.” It was their sixth Paralympic medal.
“We have so many amazing memories and have had so many great times together. My first world medal was with Eve in 2014, and my first Paralympic medal was with her in 2016. So it’s been an incredible journey with her. We had our challenging times, cycling is such a tough sport and tandem racing adds more challenges. But it’s an amazing sport – having a Paralympic athlete, a disabled athlete, racing and training with an able-bodied athlete is something really special. It was a great end to our partnership and to the time we’ve had together.”
It’s been a whirlwind since Paris and Zurich, a gruelling 25-day spell when Dunlevy won those five medals with Kelly and McCrystal. She was given a homecoming in her father’s native Mountcharles in Donegal after the World Championships, Kelly joining her, visiting 10 schools during her stay to show off her medals. There were more celebrations to attend back in her hometown of Crawley in West Sussex, and family birthday and wedding anniversary dos to attend.
Finally, last Saturday, she got to sit down and watch recordings of her September exploits with her family. “It’s funny, the lead-up to it all feels so slow. You’re doing two training sessions a day, you’re exhausted and you’re just sleeping when you can. Then Paris comes around and it just flies by. Zurich the same. Suddenly, it’s over. There’ll be a comedown from it all soon, I’d imagine, but it’s been so busy since then, I haven’t had time to reflect.”
Dunlevy will be 43 next month, but she’s not rushing in to any retirement decisions just yet. “In terms of carrying on to LA 2028, I’m not sure. I’m going to carry on next year and decide then. I also have to think about what I’m going to do when I’m retired because I’ve been in sport all my life, and you can’t do it forever.”
“But I want to give back to the sport because it has given so much to me. Whether that’s doing corporate or school talks, hoping to inspire people, we’ll see. On the side, I might do personal training, sports’ massage therapies. I’ve done a few courses, but I need to do some more. And then I need to start writing down things for a book that will come out when I retire.”
September 2024 will need a tome of its own. The whole year? Several volumes.
Previous monthly winners – December: Fionnuala McCormack (Athletics); January: Lucy Mulhall (Rugby); February: Mona McSharry (Swimming); March: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing); April: Róisín Ní Riain (Swimming); May: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics); June: Ciara Mageean (Athletics); July: Kellie Harrington (Boxing); August: Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh (Gaelic football).
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