Fifth place and a personal best was a superb result for the Irish tandem pair of Eve McCrystal and Katie George Dunlevy but they missed a medal ride-off by two hundredths of a second (Photo: Diarmuid Greene-Sportsfile)
By Brian Canty
Katie George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal just missed out on a bronze medal ride-off in the WB tandem pursuit on day five of the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The pair clocked a personal best of 3.33.471 for the three–kilometre event, some six seconds slower than winners Britain, with New Zealand and Britain’s second team taking third.
Completing the top four were New Zealand’s second team who were less than two hundredths of a second faster than the Irish pair.
It’s really gutting for them as they rode a near perfect race and coming so close to a medal ride-off will be of little comfort to them.
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They were in fourth place coming into the last lap but the Kiwi duo just about did enough to edge them out of the medal ride position.
McCrystal and Dunlevy had huge support in the velodrome today but their best efforts to make the bronze medal ride-off were not good enough by the tiniest of margins.
Speaking afterwards, Dunlevy and McCrystal couldn’t conceal their emotions; “We’re disappointed. We’re here to get in the medal ride-off, for gold and silver; we believed we could do it.
“We were aiming to get a personal best today, but it wasn’t good enough on the day.
“We train on the track when we can and go to camps in Majorca, but it does go back to not having that velodrome at home.
“It would make such a difference if we had one, there’s only so much you can do with limited time.
“We were up against two nations who train full time in the velodrome. Hopefully our advantage will be the time trial [on the road]; it doesn’t cost to train on an open road.
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The Irish pair put in a huge amount of work but the strength in depth of the British and Kiwi teams was clear with both nations seeing two tandems doing through to the last four for the medal ride offs (Photo: Diarmuid Greene-Sportsfile)
“Believe me Neill [Delahaye – coach] gives us a programme to get us here race fit and read and we got a two and a half second PB which is amazing for us, but it’s just that the top four are full-time training on a velodrome.”
Meanwhile, Damien Vereker and sighted pilot Sean Hahessy finished eighth in the men’s B Tandem kilo TT in a personal best time of 1:06:370.
Gold went to the Dutch in the only sub-60 second time of the event.
Tristan Bangma and his pilot Tuen Mulder took the honours there in a blistering time of 59.822 while Britain and Germany took silver and bronze, respectively.
Damien Vereker of Ireland, along with his pilot Sean Hahessy, receive some encouragement from head coach Neill Delahaye as they set off for the Men's B 1000m Time Trial at the Rio Olympic Velodrome (Photo: Diarmuid Greene-Sportsfile)
Attention now switches to the road events which get underway on Tuesday with a packed schedule for the Irish.
Colin Lynch, Ciara Staunton and Declan Slevin are in action at 12noon (Irish time) on Tuesday.
They’re in time-trial events while in the afternoon, Eoghan Clifford will be aiming to follow up his bronze from the track with a similar performance in the C3 time-trial.
At the same time, Eve McCrystal and Katie George Dunlevy go in the women’s B time-trial with male pairing Peter Ryan and Marcin Mizgajski going in the same event (all 5.30pm Irish time).
The day after, Ciara Staunton does the H2-4 road race at 4.20pm with Slevin off two hours later in the H3 event.
Clifford and Lynch will complete the Irish involvement on Friday when they both compete in the C1-3 road race.
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