Waking Hours

Katie-George Dunlevy (37) is a Team Ireland Paralympian and Rio 2016 Paralympic gold and silver road cycling medallist with her pilot Eve McCrystal. She is partially sighted and lives in Crawley, England, with her parents

Going for paralympic gold

Iget up at 7.45am. I like my sleep and I need it, especially as an athlete. If I have a double day of training, I have a nap in the afternoon as well.

I never miss breakfast, even on a day off. I have porridge, fruit, yoghurt, lots of milk, and then I go to the gym.

At the moment, I’m living with my parents. The gym is just down the road

— a 45-minute walk — but it’s not accessible for me. If my parents can’t give me a lift, I get a taxi. Also, I shouldn’t be walking around too much. That’s a no-no for training. I pay a man to oversee my training sessions. He makes sure that my form is correct, and he helps set up the weights. If the gym is dimly lit, or there are weights on the floor, I could trip over them. This is because I’ve only got central vision.

I’m a full-time para-cyclist and I race on the back of a tandem. I’m partially sighted. Even though I was born in England, I can represent Ireland, as my dad is from Donegal.

I was diagnosed with an eye condition at the age of 11 — retinitis pigmentosa. It affects the back of the eye. It’s a progressive and degenerative disorder. It’s like the retina is dying in the eye and you are losing sight. I have tunnel vision and central vision, but no peripheral vision.

Before I was diagnosed, I was struggling at school because of my sight loss. I thought that I was stupid. I was left out of PE class and I had low self-esteem. I wasn’t bumping into anything, but I was wearing glasses from the age of five. I went for a routine eye examination and that’s how they spotted it.

When I was diagnosed, it gave me clarity as to why I was struggling.

There are different forms of my eye condition. When I was 11, the professor told me and my family that I was likely to go blind by the age of 30. I’m 37 now and my sight has been quite stable. I’ve only lost a little bit since I was diagnosed. I don’t know what the future holds.

My parents sent me to a school for the blind, but even though I was struggling at my normal school, I didn’t want to go. I remember screaming and running down the road. I didn’t want to go away. But when I went to the school it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned Braille because they thought I might lose my sight and I learned to touch-type. But, best of all, the PE teacher recognised that I was good at sport and encouraged me. It was then that I started to believe in myself. I enjoyed sport and I started to get confident.

I always think that there is a silver lining, and without my eye condition, I wouldn’t be the sportswoman I am today. Nor would I have achieved so much. We won gold and silver in the Paralympics in Rio and now we are going for gold for Tokyo in 2020. That’s what it’s all about — winning and going for gold. Para-cycling is a team sport. I race on the back of the tandem and the person who is my pilot is full-sighted and able-bodied. We both train full-time. Communication is important on a tandem. We’re both connected with a chain or a belt. So when she is pushing, so am I. As soon as Eve [McCrystal], my pilot, got on the bike, I just knew that there was something good there. After a couple of weeks, she said, ‘Let’s go for Rio and see how we get on.’ We won a gold and a silver. We know how to be around each other on race day and on that day, she said, ‘Let’s do this.’

We’re all about Tokyo now and we’re aiming to defend our time trial. We want to win gold on the road and a medal on the track.

Training on a track can be difficult because Ireland doesn’t have a track. On the road, it’s more about endurance and it’s longer. I can’t go out training unless I’m on a tandem. We go out in wind and rain, but the weather has to be sensible and safe. If the weather is very bad, we do a turbo-session instead. Eve lives in Dundalk and I live in England. People can’t believe that we don’t live in the same country and they wonder how we’ve done it, but we have. We just work around it.

I’m a very determined individual and I’ve got massive fighting spirit. Training can be challenging but you have to deal with adversities and keep going.

Diet is very important, and I tend to struggle with the amount of food I have to eat. I might have to eat 4,000 calories a day. A lot of the times I don’t want it and I don’t feel hungry, but you can’t go by appetite. The number of people who say to me that they wish they had to eat that amount of calories.

Sometimes after a heavy training session, your immune system is lower, so it’s not wise to go into a public area. You have to be mindful of germs and infections. You have to look after yourself. When a session is over, I forget about it. It’s not good to keep analysing things. I train six days a week and it can be hard to have a life outside sport, because a lot of my friends will be working when I’m free. But I’m happy to make those sacrifices because I love what I’m doing.

In the evenings, I like to go to the cinema or watch TV or listen to a podcast. You have to have time to just chill out and relax.

I’m in bed at 10pm, trying to get lots of quality sleep. Lots of people ask me why I didn’t retire after winning gold in Rio. But I want to see how far I can go. I know that I can’t be at the top forever, but I’d rather fail trying than wonder what if.

“Without my eye condition, I wouldn’t be the sportswoman I am today”