Katie-George Dunlevy and pilot Eve McCrystal finished second in the final of the women’s B 3,000m individual pursuit at the Paralympic Games at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome on Sunday to claim a silver medal.
It is the sixth Paralympic medal the dynamic duo have won together in a race which also marks their last partnership as a crew.
The tandem pair led for much of the final and were still in front after 2,000 metres, but Britain’s Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holly delivered a storming finish to reel in the Irish duo in the closing laps and win by 2.166 seconds.
Dunlevy (42) and McCrystal (46) posted a time of 3:21.315, with Unwin and Holly coming home in first with a 3:19.149 after an epic final.
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It is Ireland’s second medal of these Paralympic Games, coming on the back of Róisín Ní Riain’s silver in the pool.
The pair won three gold medals and two silver medals across the 2016 and 2020 Paralympic Games as well as five gold medals at UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships.
Of those five previous Paralympic medals, only one had been attained on the track – silver in the B 3,000m individual pursuit at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
“We were both brave enough to go for it and that’s what matters,” McCrystal said. “It was just that last wo laps of track experience, track legs, we’re a small nation with no track and we put it up to Great Britain, who live on a track every day of the week.”
Dunlevy said: “We left it out there on those two rides, we did the race of our lives to get here. I’m so proud of us both for doing that together. We put a lot of hard work into this. We trained so, so hard.
“After the less than ideal way coming in [to the Games], it makes the win so much sweeter.”
