Dunlevy unparalleled in enduring time trial 'sufferfest'
WORLD OF PAIN: Katie-George Dunlevy and pilot Linda Kelly of Ireland celebrate at the end of their run in the women's B individual time trial. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
You don’t pull in and park at the end of a road time trial. If you have the capacity to pull in and park, you’ve done it wrong. Very, very wrong.
As Katie-George Dunlevy and Linda Kelly wheeled around the bend just beyond the finish line, there waiting for them were two Irish staff. The staff knew what to expect, the uninitiated standing behind the barrier did not.
First they stood out onto the road to stop the bike dead. Second they lifted the two women off the tandem. And third they helped and held Dunlevy and Kelly to the curb before gently easing them to the ground.
For over a minute, Ireland’s first gold medalists of these Paralympics lay against the curb. No celebrating. No embracing. No emotion. No movement. Just crippling pain and pure exhaustion.
“A sufferfest,” was Dunlevy’s description of the event she had just won for a third successive Games.
“After five minutes, you are just suffering. Your body is screaming at you to stop. Your lungs are screaming, your legs are screaming. You have foam coming out your mouth.
“If I am not in a world of pain and am not falling off the bike at the finish, I haven't worked hard enough.”
No Para cyclist has the capacity to suffer like Dunlevy. She is unparalleled in that most unglamorous department.
Her and Kelly got word in their ear that the Brits were 10 seconds up on them after the first 5.8km leg. This was the British pair of Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl who relegated Katie-George and Eve McCrystal to track silver last Sunday.
After gold in the time trial in Rio and again in Tokyo three years ago, road silver was a currency of no value to 42-year-old Dunlevy. The call thus went out to increase the suffering.
By the halfway mark of the 28.3km event, the Irish pair had propelled themselves from 10 seconds down to 40 seconds clear of Unwin and Holl. A stunning second stretch. The lead stayed pedaling in only one direction thereafter.
At the finish line in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, their time of 38:16.58 left them one minute and 23 seconds ahead of the second-placed Brits.
“We had a few hairy moments, nearly hit the barriers, a close shave, but that's racing, you are on the limit,” Katie-George continued.
“We knew the gradients, the uphill bits, would stand to us and that's where we could get time in on the other bikes. We'd have to go over on our power, so we just did. We delivered.” Any bike with Dunlevy on board always does.
A fourth Paralympic gold medal for the West Sussex woman, a seventh in total. Remarkable longevity at the highest peak of her sport.
“If someone said that to me 12 years ago, I would have never believed them,” her voice now breaking.
“After Tokyo, I decided to carry on for Paris to defend this title. This is what meant the most for me, to defend my title here.
“And I'm just so proud of Linda. She knew after Tokyo I wanted to defend my title, and I have had setbacks and so has Linda, but she stepped in, she had pressure on her shoulders, we both did, so to come away and win that, I actually can’t believe it. It will take a while to sink in.”
The uniqueness of her seventh Paralympic medal is that it is the first won without Eve McCrystal on the front saddle.
When McCrystal informed the relevant high-performance powers ahead of the 2023 season that she was going back to work full-time as a Garda and therefore could not commit to both track and road with her tandem partner of 10 years, the search began for a new pilot.
The high-performance powers invited Linda Kelly up from New Ross for an audition. She had never mounted a tandem bike in her life, let alone steered one. Her first outing with Dunlevy two years ago was in an Abbotstown car park.
“We were in runners, going in circles around the car park. The first words that came to my head were, ‘this is like moving a gate, it’s so long’,” she laughingly recalled.
“I was just delighted the day I got the text message. I actually said I'd do it before I even asked for the day off from work. My workplace didn't know, I just said, ‘lads, I am going’.”
The new partnership was seamless. Then it became peerless. They were untouchable in 2023.
This current season, prior to Paris, had not been kind. A crash in early May left Kelly concussed. Unable to ride at their next outing a week and a half later, McCrystal piloted Dunlevy for the race in Italy. Another crash. A broken collarbone for Dunlevy.
“I was off structured training for about a month,” 30-year-old Kelly explained.
“It was about two weeks off the bike altogether and then I had to come back slowly, 30 minutes per day of no intensity for about a week and a half, two weeks, just spinning the legs. I did lose quite a lot of fitness.
“I got back to my first structured week of training, and I got covid then, so it was another drop of the head. But I wasn't giving up. I wanted to be here, performing today.”
In July, and conscious of time lost, the pair organised a self-funded camp exclusively focused on road work. It was their third self-funded camp in less than a year.
The purse strings were forever being tested in pursuit of the top podium step. There was a new bike purchased by Katie-George that cost her a “fortune”.
They had invested heavily in Paris. They suffered heavily from 3pm yesterday to ensure a healthy return.
“It’s all paid off, you have the medals for the rest of your life and nobody can take that from you,” said the four-time Paralympic champion.
“Medals and memories, this is one to cherish for sure,” Kelly chimed in.
“Katie and Eve were always a successful partnership and they got silver on the track the other day which was just amazing because in Ireland we don't have a track, so it’s amazing to follow in their footsteps.
“It’s just a dream for me to get a medal at the Paralympics, a gold medal. It’s just magic.”
The pair’s magic on the road raises Ireland’s medal haul to five. Five medals won exclusively by women, won exclusively by visually impaired women.
“Róisín and Orla last night medaling, and it was Róisín’s second, all of the medalists are women and we're all visually impaired women,” noted Katie-George.
“For any young children at home with vision impairment, if they've seen any of our races, hopefully we can inspire them to believe in themselves and to dream big. Hopefully we're inspiring the next generation in whatever they do, sport or anything else.”
How could they not.
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