‘The pilot is the eyes, I have to go by feel’
Cyclists Dunlevy and McCrystal share a bond and goal that goes beyond being team-mates
‘I WAS GIVEN HELP AT SCHOOL, I HAD VERY LOW SELF-ESTEEM’
KATIE-GEORGE Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal are partners in a world-class sporting endeavour but their relationship has a value beyond that. They are a two-woman counter to the stereotypical image of the lonely athlete whose achievements are built on hours spent in isolated training sessions.
The story of Dunlevy and McCrystal is, rather, a tribute to co-operation, selflessness and the willingness of two people to sacrifice enormous parts of their lives in pursuit of common, glittering goals.
‘We want the same thing,’ says Dunlevy. ‘It’s special to find that on a tandem. To find someone who wants it as much as me, who wants to commit and work towards it, is just amazing.’
‘I always think it’s like sisters,’ says McCrystal. ‘You’re not going to get on all the time, but the end goal, we’ve never strayed away from that.
‘There’s not one that wants it more than the other. There’s not one that’s working harder than the other.
‘The two of us are very similar athletes, but I have a family at home, and my priorities are completely different to Katie’s.
‘But when we’re on the bike, that bike just moves as one unit.’
Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal are cyclists, whose most glorious moment came at the Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016.
They won gold in the tandem time trial and silver in the road race.
They were double gold medallists at the paracycling world road championships in 2017 and 2018, winning both the road race and the time trial in successive years, before reclaiming their time-trial gold this September and facing the unfamiliar feeling of a silver in the road race.
Rio was the finest of their many achievements yet, though.
A marvellous photograph captured the moment they learned that they had won the time trial. Their race was run, but they were obliged to wait for other countries to complete their efforts on the course.
Finally, it is confirmed that Dunlevy and McCrystal are the winners, and the image that captures that realisation is one of the enduring Irish sports photos.
Dunlevy stands, doubled over with joy and incredulity. McCrystal sits, slumped, her head thrown back, a study in exhaustion and relief.
Like everything else in their racing careers, this is a shared experience. McCrystal is the pilot, Dunlevy what is known as the stoker.
McCrystal sees the route ahead, Dunlevy sits behind her, providing power. Between them, the ambition has proved enough to conquer the world.
Katie-George Dunlevy was diagnosed at the age of 11 with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa.
It’s a condition that seriously affects the vision, but diagnosis marked an important hinge point in Dunlevy’s life. She suddenly realised that not everybody saw the world as she did, and thereafter sport came to play a critical part in how she lived and thrived.
She is English born and raised, her father a native of Donegal which allows her to compete for Ireland.
Eve McCrystal is a native of Dundalk, and a garda and mother of two.
The pair reached an elite standard of sport through very different lives, but for the past six years they have been co-workers in one of the most interesting and inspiring stories in Irish sport.
That photo in Rio marked the high point – so far. Ten months out from the Paralympics in Tokyo, they want to dream it up all over again.
‘I hate that photograph,’ says McCrystal with an exaggerated groan. She is the chattier of the two, a vibrant personality with seeming unbounded energy.
‘People say they love it,’ grins
Dunlevy, who is quiet and seems more laidback.
‘It’s a running joke between the two of us,’ laughs McCrystal. ‘I said, “Look at the state of me!” and Katie said, “You’re only after doing a time trial. What did you think you were going to look like?”’
They looked like champions, and they want to be again. Tokyo is starting to loom.
‘I know some people don’t like to say, “I’m aiming for this”, but I like to say it and I’ll say it out: We’re aiming for golds,’ says Dunlevy.
They know they are good enough, and that they have a partnership that works. They can also call on diverse histories, but stories that share a level of dedication and discipline, that are distinguished by an acceptance of sacrifice.
‘I got into sport when I was a teenager,’ recalls Katie-George.
‘It was due to opportunities I got, and encouragement. I had quite low self-esteem before that, and sport was a way for me to find confidence through finding something that I was good at.
‘I was diagnosed at the age of 11. Before that, I struggled. I thought I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t see. I thought I could see the same as everyone else.
‘When I was diagnosed then, even though it was devastating news, it made me realise why I struggled. But I struggled with that news because I didn’t want to be different.
‘I was given help at school, and I still had very low self-esteem. My mum and dad sent me to a school for the blind and visually impaired and that’s when I got into sport.
‘In the school, they saw that I was good at swimming. They phoned my mum and dad up and said, “Who taught Katie to swim?”
‘And my mum said, “No-one, we just threw her in the pool and she just played with everyone else”. And they said, “She’s a natural and we want to coach her”.
‘That was the start of my sport. Then I got into athletics, swimming and rowing. I had a lot of setbacks, so the cycling came at the right time.
‘It was a great opportunity and I loved it as soon as I got on the bike and I wanted to go further in it.’
Eve McCrystal has helped her to go further than she might ever have dared.
McCrystal was an estimable athlete before being asked to trial out the tandem bike with Dunlevy.
She had competed in ironman triathlons, but her childhood was consumed by a love of sport, too.
‘It’s always been there. My mam drove us everywhere. She had a Daihatsu Charade with no seats in the back but the whole parish was in it.
‘I played football, then I got injured and I wasn’t allowed to play football so I did athletics. I was never really good at any of those sports, but I enjoyed doing them.
‘It was a social outlet. The competitiveness didn’t really come in for me until the second Ironman I did, and that was after the birth of my second daughter.
‘And then when I got on the tandem I wanted to win.’
Dunlevy took up cycling in 2011 and had been through a number of partners when McCrystal entered her sporting life.
The latter had come to the attention of Neil Delahaye, the national development coach with Cycling Ireland, when she won a medal in the time trial at the national championships in 2013. He asked her to consider a trial on the tandem with Dunlevy.
‘The first ride we did together was in Swords. We were on a busy main road with roundabouts and traffic lights,’ laughs Katie-George at the memory. ‘We were thrown in at the deep end. Off we went, but Eve just got on with it. From talking, and I knew about the national championships, (I thought) that this could be good. I had a feeling.
‘That was the end of 2013. In February or March 2014 we went on a training camp to Majorca, and that was the start of it.’
A settled tandem partnership is, Dunlevy explains, vital.
‘It’s a team sport, so it’s like any team. If you’re not training with them, and working on that relationship together on and off the bike, then when it comes to racing you have to put that time in.
‘The pilot is the eyes on the bike, and I have to go by feel a lot of the time. We’re going by body language, and if we haven’t done that in training and had that time together, then it’s just not going to work.
‘You’re going to become separate on the bike.’
If there is more of a practical need to a steady partnership for Dunlevy, McCrystal values it as highly.
‘I just love it,’ she says.
‘I much prefer the tandem to solo, because even when you’re training you can chat. You can have a conversation. Then, if you’re having a bit of an off-day or (thinking) “I don’t want to train”, it’s “I’m going to have to train because I’m not going to let her down”.
‘There is no way I would be on that start line not ready to race and win a medal, because I’m not just letting myself down, it’s the team. It’s Neil, the nutritionist, everybody that has gone to the time and effort of getting that bike to the start line.
‘It’s not just me and Katie.’ Committing to Tokyo was not an instant decision for either athlete. McCrystal will be 42 by the time of the Paralympics, and Dunlevy will be just a few months shy of her 39th birthday.
But once they decided to go again, their determination will not admit obstacles or excuses.
One big change in their circumstances was the decision for the past two years of Sport Ireland to fund them as a partnership, rather than just Katie-George as the Paralympian.
It means that McCrystal is able to go on career break between now and Tokyo.
‘I couldn’t do it (otherwise),’ she says flatly. ‘I wouldn’t be here. I can’t do it without the funding, I can’t do it without the support. I’m rearing two children on my own financially. That’s very difficult.
‘It was one or the other. That’s another motivation on that start line. You don’t just want to win a medal to get a gold medal for your country and for Katie. For me, it was my family. There are an awful lot of factors for me personally.’
‘It was about equality,’ nods Dunlevy. ‘Other para athletes were getting funded. We had medalled and got on podiums year after year and we weren’t. I had to share the funding with Eve.
‘For us get individual funding was massive, for me to be able to support Eve and for her to be able to take a year out.
‘It was a really big weight off our shoulders.’
It was one more challenge overcome by two people who, as individuals, are studies in diligence and perseverance.
Together, they have conquered the world. Now they want to do it one more time.