Ireland Has A Massive Future In Professional Cycling - Here’s Why

By Evan Dalton for TheCollegeView

Lara Gillespe celebrates gold at the 2025 UCI World Championship - Photo  : Javier Torres/AFP via Getty Images


The sporting sphere in Ireland is ball dominated. Football, GAA, rugby, the new found love for the NFL and even those glorious weeks of wall to wall hockey coverage in 2018 when the Irish women’s team reached the world cup final, the media and our television guides are wall to wall ball sport coverage. 


However, if we look past our traditional ‘ball’ sports, there is a hidden gem developing monstrous  Irish talent, and that is cycling. Across both codes, track cycling and events that take place on the road, Ireland have had their most successful two years in quite some time, and it’s only going to get better. 


The Government of Ireland gave the green light this week for construction of a new National Velodrome in Abbotstown, expanding the Sport Ireland Campus further. Sport Ireland first got plans in motion in 2023, and after the traditional lengthy planning and tendering process, construction is set to be completed in 2027. It will be the first indoor velodrome in the country, with a second planned to be constructed on the campus of TUS in Limerick.


Why Now?


The almost €100m investment comes at a great time for cycling enthusiasts, as Ireland crowned its first ever female indoor cycling world champion in the form of Lara Gillespie at this year's UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Santiago, Chile. Gillespie is only the third track world champion from the country, after Martyn Irvine in 2013 and Harry Reynolds all the way back in 1896. She defeated Great Britain’s Olympic powerhouse Katie Archibald in stunning fashion in the elimination race. 


The Wicklow native is not the only one thriving on the track, with Team Ireland seeing success at the 2024 Paralympics. Katie George-Dunlevy and pilot Eve McCrystal took home silver at Women’s Individual Pursuit. This is an event for those with a visual impairment, and the ‘pilot’ acts as a navigator. Meanwhile in other competitions, Ronan Grimes and Richael Timothy obliterated national records at the Vélodrome de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. 


The Road to Success 

Ireland is entering their golden era of track cycling, but on the road, the nation is also starting to thread the needle of reaching Stephen Roche levels of success again. Roche was the second ever rider to win the Tour De France, Giro d’Italia and World Road Race Championship when he did it 1987. Only one name has joined Eddy Merckx and himself since, that of Tadej Pogacar. Roche rose to success alongside Waterford man Sean Kelly. 


Our road racers are soaring, and rewards are well and truly being reaped. 


Dunlevy did not go home from Paris with just her indoor medal. Her and her pilot, Linda Kelly, took gold in the Women’s Time Trial and silver in the Women’s Road Race. This completed a trifecta of gold medals in the time trial, and leaves her with eight Olympic medals. No one else has won her specialised event, on the biggest stage of them all, since 2012. If you want to look at athletes with similar dominance, you’ve to turn to the likes of Usian Bolt. 


Then arguably our biggest achievement of the recent past came in July. Ben Healy, a 25 year old who cycles professionally for WorldTeam EF Education-EasyPost, became the first Irish athlete since Roche in ‘87 to lead the overall classification of the Tour de France, and wear the famous yellow jersey. 


It ended a 38 year drought at the biggest cycling event of the year, and although Healy was not able to stay in the fight for victory, he finished ninth overall, took a stage win, and was also voted as the recipient of the ‘Super Combativity Award,’ a prestigious prize given at the end of the Tour to the most aggressive and attacking rider of the entire race.


“It’s fairytale” exclaimed Healy, when he received the jersey for the first time. “I'm just super proud to represent Ireland and wear the yellow jersey for them. Hopefully, I can do it justice.”


This is off the back of an incredible showing in the Paris 2024 Road Race, where Healy and fellow compatriot Ryan Mullen led for the vast majority of the over six hour event, which was won by Belgian Remco Evenepoel. 


How To Expand The ‘Chain’ Of Success?

The continued success of the discipline has been recognised by Cycling Ireland, who set out a five year plan at the end of 2024, which covers plans until and beyond the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. 


The main aim of such plans is to increase competitor numbers in domestic competition, and then further domestic competitors development with high performance pathway support. The new plans were welcomed, confirming Cycling Ireland has ‘cleared its name’ so to speak, after a suspension from applying for Government funding, due to conflict in a proposed partnership with Irish continental team EvoPro Racing. The partnership was ultimately cancelled due to improper board practices and lack of transparency on both sides. 


James Quilligan, Chief Executive of Cycling Ireland, who took over after the aforementioned controversy, believes a successful organisation is behind sporting success. “I firmly believe that we are on the path to becoming the leading national governing body on the island, and this strategic plan is a crucial step in that journey.”


With proper investment in new facilities, an uncapped level of talent and potential and proper practices and planned success, leaves Irish cycling in a fantastic position going forward. 

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