Cycling Ireland has confirmed the squad of 11 riders who will represent Ireland at the UCI Paracycling Road World Championships.
Katie George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal will compete in both the road and time trial events at the UCI Paracycling World Championships in Emmen, the Netherlands from September 12 – 15. The duo completed a historic double-double at the 2018 World Championships where they claimed the rainbow jersey in both the road and time trial events defending their titles from the year previous.
Ronan Grimes, in the MC4 category, will go into the championships with hopes of claiming another world medal. Grimes won silver at the Track World Championships back in March and last week won the bronze medal at the Canadian World Cup.
Cycling Ireland National Performance Coach Neill Delahaye said: “These World Championships carry a heavy weighting of importance and significance for us not only as a key objective for 2019 but as a crucial Tokyo 2020 qualifier. We are happy to provide opportunity to a large team that is well represented across multiple classes which we hope enhances our prospects of securing good points to feed into the qualification of Nations Slots for the Paralympic Games.”
“There is a really dynamic mix of experienced campaigners and World Championship debutants this year. The bar has been set very high with the success we’ve had over the last numbers of years with Katie & Eve setting a Rainbow Stripes standard which everyone else aspires to and are putting the hard work in to match. The riders have been preparing well and are going into this event in good condition. I am happy with where they are at. We expect conditions in Emmen to be what you normally encounter in the Netherlands, flat parcours and windy, which usually leads to intense racing. We are definitely ready for that and the riders are really motivated to put all the hard training hours to good use and deliver their best performances.”
Men’s Road Race and Time Trial
Declan Slevin MH3 Category
Ronan Grimes MC4 Category
Chris Burns MC2 Category
Damien Vereker & Paul Forristal MB Category
Peter Ryan & Sean Hahessy MB Category
Gary O’Reilly MH5 Category
Women’s Road Race and Time Trial
Katie George Dunlevy & Eve McCrystal WB Category
Rachael Timothy WC3 Category
