Lara Gillespie shares in €350,000 Paris Olympics scholarship funds

*Lara Gillespie has been named among a group of athletes, across sports, to receive an Olympic scholarship as she builds towards Paris 2024*

Lara Gillespie has had her medal-winning consistency rewarded as she is the only cyclist among a group of 15 athletes to share a €350,000 Olympic scholarship fund. The Irish women's hockey team has been awarded €100,000 as they build towards the Games, with 15 individual athletes also set to receive €15,000 each.

The 'Paris Scholarships' aim to support athletes as they prepare for the 2024 Games and will assist in the qualification efforts. The recipients were named today by the Olympic Federation of Ireland.

Some €250,000 in funding for the grants has been supplied by the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Olympic Solidarity programme while the remaining €100,000 comes from Olympic Federation of Ireland funds. The recipients, from across 12 sports, were nominated for funding by their national federations.

Gillespie, who has been injured of late, claimed a silver medal at the U23 European Track Championships last year, in the individual pursuit. She is a former junior European champion on the track, in the points race, and won a total of four Europeans medals as a junior and one medal at the World Championships.

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While the qualification process for the Olympic Games has not yet begun, Gillespie is tipped to qualify, on the track.

Team Ireland Chef de Mission for the Paris Olympic Games, 2012 triathlon Olympian Gavin Noble, said 35 athletes were nominated for the scholarships from across 19 sports.

“In the Tokyo cycle, twelve scholarships were awarded, and from those nine athletes qualified for the Games, with two finalists at the Tokyo Olympics. Naturally, we are aiming to build on those results,” he said.

“Through the support of the International Olympic Committee Solidarity Fund, and with the additional backing of Permanent TSB, Allianz and Deloitte, we are able to fund more athletes, to a higher level than ever before, and it is very much part of our performance and commercial strategy that we continue to move in this direction.”