'We will have a special bond forever' - Dunlevy and McCrystal end partnership on high
SISTERS: Katie George Dunlevy, left, and pilot Eve McCrystal of Ireland react after the women's B 3000m individual pursuit final at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
On their second lap of silver celebration, Eve McCrystal let back her hand. Reaching out to grab it was the West Sussex woman who has come to be her sister. The hands remain clasped for an entire lap. One last lap together.
It was November 2013 when Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal first mounted the same bike. Katie-George, a world champion rower for Great Britain in a different lifetime, had pedaled with four different pilots during her first three years wearing green lycra. But for whatever reason, none of those pairings stuck or sustained.
Dunlevy and Dundalk single mother-of-two McCrystal more than stuck. For almost 11 years, they cycled clear of the peloton and filled the front basket of their tandem bike with medals. Three Paralympic gold medals. Six world championship golds. Para cycling’s peerless partnership.
Utterly dominant as they were, it would be wildly inaccurate to call this a purely cycling partnership. You don’t live on the same bike as someone for almost 11 years without also living each other’s darkest and brightest moments off it.
“We're like sisters. We fall in, we fall out,” said 46-year-old McCrystal.
“We have gone through some really tough times together,” added 42-year-old Dunlevy.
“You don't really go through that with anyone else, so we know what each other have gone through, you know what each other gives and has given, and mentally and emotionally what you are going through together.
“We have a special bond we will have forever. Those memories and special moments like today, no one else will know what that feels like except me and Eve.”
“Today” was a silver send-off. Their last ride together had taken them onto the Paralympic podium for a sixth time. For well over half of the 3,000m individual pursuit gold medal race, their last ride together was spinning furiously towards the podium’s top step.
But in the last four laps, the British pair of Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl, who set a 3:17.643 world record in qualifying, retook the lead and powered to a two-second victory.
Dismounting the bike for the final time together, they walked up the wooden track to their families. Katie-George walked up to her parents John, a native of Mountcharles in Donegal, and Alana.
“My dad is crying his eyes out. It makes me very grateful to see my parents cry, I don't see them cry very often.”
Eve walked up to her two daughters, 16-year-old Ava and 14-year-old Nessa. Too young to travel to Rio and not allowed to travel to Tokyo, this was their first Paralympics watching mammy in the flesh.
“From when my kids were born, they have seen me training in the kitchen on a turbo trainer. Every single day. For them to see all of our hard work, that resilience, that determination, for them to see that and a medal, I can't put that into words.”
Tears spilled of pride and joy. The tears spilled after their earlier qualifying round on Sunday morning were for themselves and each other. No one else.
Qualifying couldn’t have been more dramatic. Or controversial. Their 3:20.481 clocking left them second of the nine bikes to complete 12 laps of the track. With only two pairs left to go, they were guaranteed, at the very worst, involvement in the bronze medal race.
Last out on the track were the French duo of Sophie-Anne Centis and Elise Delzenne and Britain’s Elizabeth Jordan and Dannielle Khan. Within half a lap, the race was stopped. The French pair had pulled in and pulled up.
The word trackside was that a French foot unclipped. A race cannot be stopped for an unclipping, a rider must clip back in while pedaling. A race can only be stopped and restarted for a mechanical issue.
In this instance, the commissaire ruled that the issue wasn’t mechanical and so the French weren’t allowed to restart.
Drama. Disbelief. Elimination. Booing. A great deal of booing from the locals.
Britain’s Jordan and Khan were allowed to restart, but as they crossed the white tape three seconds down on the Irish posting, Dunlevy and McCrystal leant across the stationary bikes on which they were warming down and embraced. They had their goodbye medal. A second Paralympic track medal for them despite never having a velodrome in Ireland to train on.
Two chairs were pulled out for their post-qualifying chat. Katie-George leaned slightly forward when answering and engaging. Eve sat back, the tears streaming down her face.
In high-performance sport, emotion, whatever it be related to, has to be parked and packed away. Otherwise, it will drain and drag. No better woman than the Dundalk Garda to keep her “shit” together and out of sight.
But now with the finish line in sight and a retirement medal confirmed - she announced in advance of the Games that Paris will be her swansong - the pent-up emotion poured out of her.
“It’s just ten years, like. It’s just the kids and work. I’m a single mother, and it’s been fucking hard. I lost my father and it's just all... I think I just kept grief and everything in.
“I can retire now so fucking proud. I’m so emotional, and I’m the fucking strong one in this relationship. I’m the bitch in this relationship. Today now she is going to have to mind me.”
Their day had begun so differently. The first words uttered by Katie-George to Eve in the athlete village were, ‘I’m not feeling great’. It continued a summer where the pair simply could not catch a break.
During a road race in early May, Katie-George and pilot Linda Kelly crashed. Because of concussion, Kelly couldn’t ride in Italy a week and a half later. And so McCrystal, who stepped back from their road partnership in 2023 after returning to work full-time, jumped back on the front of Katie-George’s bike. Another crash. A shattered collarbone for Dunlevy.
At the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines yesterday, she pulled back her top to show us where four pins and a plate had been inserted.
“We just had to fight, and we are both fighters. We have trained damn hard to get here. We finished our races and we got a medal, I would never have thought that two months ago. Sometimes, you’ve to do more with your mental strength than with your body,” said Katie-George.
“However shit I feel, as a tandem pairing you have to take each other’s shit, so to speak,” McCrystal chimed in. “We’ve always backed each other. Today is probably the most nervous I have ever been in my whole entire life.
“Six days a week, every single week for a decade me and her have trained. We have never ever faltered or taken our foot off the gas. We have committed every single day.
“Sport can be tough. We have been in the bronze medal ride and got fourth so many times, it can be really hard. To come away with the medal, we are over the moon.”
On Wednesday and Friday next, they will take to the roads of Paris on different bikes. Dunlevy and Kelly, McCrystal and Josephine Healion. They’ll compete against each other. They’ll fight against each other. They’ll attempt to outdo one another. And when it’s all over, they’ll come back to each other. Exactly as sisters do.
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