Martin Gordon and Eamonn Byrne have produced a lifetime best on the biggest day of their career at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in their 1000m time trial event.
The Garda pair – Gordon a lawyer with the Garda and Byrne
a frontline member of the force – finished the event in 5th place and said they
were delighted to take a personal best.
They were fastest when they completed their ride in a
time of 1:01.545. The gold and silver medals went to tandems from Great
Britain; Neil Fachie and pilot Matt Rotherham taking gold in 58.038, while James
Ball and his pilot Lewis Stewart claimed silver in a time of 59.503.
The bronze went to François Pervis et Raphaël Beaugillet of
France in a time of 1:00.472.
“That’s a huge PB time. We didn’t just break our PB we absolutely destroyed it,” said a delighted Gordon after he and Byrne really stepped up when the pressure was on.
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Gordon continued: “To come over from Worlds last year to get 1:03.6 and do what we did today, 1:01.545 is just fantastic. To be able to deliver that on the biggest possible stage is mind blowing, it didn’t just happen – five years have gone into that,” he said.
“There have been huge amounts of people from Sports
Ireland and Cycling Ireland around us. Thanks so much to everyone, local
people, friends, family colleagues, everyone.
“I’ve had
messages from all over the world, from France, Australia America, you name it. The support
comes from far and wide – it was not possible to do this without that support
and we can’t say that enough.”
Byrne, a veteran
sprinter on the home scene, said the event was always over so fast it always went
by in a blur. But, like Gordon, he was delighted with their performance.
“I
couldn’t tell you about the race, never remember the kilo,” he confirmed. “Go
out hard and try and be smooth in the middle and just die – and that’s what we
did.
“It hurt a lot. We don’t look at the splits but I would
be very confident that was a power PB.”
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