A huge congratulations is in order for these Irish athletes.
The weekend proved to be incredibly successful for Irish athletes at the 2020 Paralympics. Jason Smyth won a gold medal for sprinting, while Katie George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal secured a silver medal for cycling.
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Jason Smyth from Derry achieved a gold medal for the T13 100m sprint, finishing just ahead of Algeria’s Skander Djamil Athmani according to
The 42. Smyth has not been beaten since he first ran the T13 100m sprint in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.
Smyth finished with a time of 10.53, with Athmani behind him by just 0.01 seconds. Colombian sprinter Jean Carlos Mina Aponza won third with a time of 10.64 seconds, proving just how close this race truly was. Smyth told
RTÉ News that initially he wasn't even sure who had crossed the line first.
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But that's not all the good news from the weekend. Cyclists Katie George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal secured a silver medal for the B 3000m Individual Pursuit, finishing just behind Team Great Britain, Lora Fachie and Corinne Hall. According to
Paralympics Ireland on Twitter, they finished with a time of 3:21.505.
RTÉ News also reported that the pair achieved a World Record breaking time of 3:19.946 in the qualifiers, a tremendous achievement.
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Dunlevy told
RTÉ News what this award meant to them. "If someone said to me before that I would get a medal in the pursuit I would never have thought it in my wildest dreams. We were hoping to do a good ride and get a PB. To get that and a world record, I’m just speechless."
We can't wait to see how our Irish athletes perform for the rest of the games.
Header image via Instagram/paralympics_ireland
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