Team Ireland's cyclists have been in action at the Paralympics in Paris, with Richael Timothy and two tandem pairings - Martin Gordon, piloted by Eoin Mullen, and Damien Vereker, piloted by Mitchell McLaughlin - in action on the velodrome.
Timothy raced the qualifier for the women’s C1-3 3000m, setting a new personal best time of 4:05.247 to finish 7th, with the first four advancing to the medal ride-offs.
Both men's tandems rode the B 4000m individual pursuit qualifier, with Vereker and McLaughlin setting a new personal best by six seconds, and a new Irish national record, when they stopped the clock at 4:14.817.
For Gordon and Mullen - sprint specialists - the pursuit was ridden to fulfill the requirement that all riders must compete in two races. Riding in advance of their target event - the B 1,000m TT on Sunday - they clocked 5:27.642 at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
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Timothy said she was very happy to have ridden a personal best on the big stage and believed she was making progress in the context of the international field she is up against.
"Obviously, there are a lot of faster girls here but I’m moving towards them and they’re staying the same. The goal is just to keep that going," she said. “It’s really good to open with a PB, just rid of the nerves and just head into the road then.
“I think the road race is probably my best chance, there’s no thinking involved which suits me, anything can happen on the day while here you’re against the clock, all the sort of stuff, so I love bunch stuff so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve two events in-between just again get the warm-up dialed in, get the nerves out of the system and keep going.”
Vereker said he was “just over the moon" that he and McLaughlin had pulled such a huge performance out of the bag at the first time of asking in Paris.
"We got the perfect momentum from the start, just kept it going all the way around. Tried not to overcook it but it’s always hard with the 4km pursuit that you don’t go too hard at the start, just delighted we didn’t die too much," he said.
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“The time trial now is what I’m really looking forward to, really fast, technical, everything you want, hills, it’s going to be a good test. The road race is another story. I’m looking forward to the road race, I’m mentally prepared to suffer for it and ready to go.”
McLaughlin said it was a fantastic experience to compete at his first Paralympics, especially with Irish fans cheering them on in the velodrome.
“It was great and good to gauge where we were on the track. It’s some buzz out there it’s incredible. For a period of time I didn’t think I was going to get here, just with my injuries and all at the start of the year, it was really tough on the head," he said.
"We were doing so well at the World Cups, we progressed so much from last year, we were in the fight for podiums, apart from some mechanical sometimes. So I’m really looking forward to a good battle in the time trial and the road race, I know we’re in a good place to fight for medals.”
For his part, Gordon said it was an incredible experience to race in front of a big crowd, especially as the Tokyo Games three years ago took place during the pandemic period.
"Both equally as significant as each other but when you’re hearing that crowd, it’s such an experience and just being here and your family being in the crowd and being so close to home, there’s something extra special about it," he said.
Mullen said while the pursuit was not his and Gordon's race, it was good to get an outing on the track ahead of Sunday.
“We normally wouldn’t ride in this event, we were coming in to get a hit out ahead of Sunday, basically you could see the other sprint bikes doing the same thing," he said.
"We had a tumble on Monday, so this gave us a chance to see how our bodies were feeling, a bit of a tester, to see the audience and get that under your belt and then hopefully prepares us for Sunday.”
