Paralympics Day 9: Irish in action and best of the rest as Katie-George Dunlevy chases gold again

8.30: Para Equestrian team event (Sarah Slattery, Michael Murphy, Kate Kerr-Horan)
8.30: Men’s road-race, C4-5 (Ronan Grimes)
9.18: Men’s S9 100m butterfly heats (Barry McClements)
9.43: T20 1,500m final (Aaron Shorten)
12.0: Men’s road-race B (Damien Vereker with Mitchell McLaughlin)
12.10: Women’s road-race B (Katie-George Dunlevy with Linda Kelly, Josephine Healion with Eve McCrystal)
*5.34pm: Men’s S9 100m butterly final, B McClements (*subject to qualifying).
Katie-George Dunlevy and her pilot Linda Kelly will be looking to follow up Wednesday’s gold medal performance in the time-trial with another in the Women’s B road-race.
It starts and finishes at Clichy-Sous-Bois with just the 99.2 kilometres in between. Dunlevy won this race with Eve McCrystal – the pair won a silver on the track in Paris – in the last Paralympics in Tokyo.
Josephine Healion and McCrystal will also contest the B road-race. In the men’s version of the event over 127.8 kilometres, Ireland will be represented by Damien Vereker and his pilot Mitchell McLaughlin, one of 12 bikes set to contest the medals. Ronan Grimes competes in the C4-5 road-race, in a peloton consisting of 29 bikes.
Ireland’s Barry McClements will be up against the in-form Simone Barlaam in the S9 100m butterfly with the Italian looking for an equally dominant performance to the one he enjoyed in winning the S9 50 freestyle by over a second and en route to breaking his own world record. He is now looking to translate that form to the S9 100m butterfly, with McClements one of his rivals.
Carlow’s Aaron Shorten, the sole male athlete on the athletics team, competes in the T20 1,500m. The St Laurence O’Toole’s athlete debuted at the Para Athletics World Championships in Paris last summer and has been training with renowned running coach Feidhlim Kelly’s group since the start of the year.
In the Para Equestrian team event Ireland will be represented by Sarah Slattery (Grade 5) on Savona, Michael Murphy (Grade 1) on Cleverboy and Kate Kerr-Horan (Grade 3) on Lykkebo’s Don Akino.
American Ellie Marks has a remarkable backstory. Due to compete at the 2014 Invictus Games in London, a respiratory infection left her in a coma in Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.
She recovered and after winning four golds at the Invictus Games in 2016 presented one of the gold medals to the hospital staff who saved her life. She made her Paralympic debut in Rio, winning breaststroke gold, and in Tokyo claimed S6 backstroke gold and will aim to defend her title.
Italy will hope for another Para-athletics clean sweep in the T63 100m (8.22pm) where Ambra Sabatini, Martina Caironi and Monica Contrafatto finished in the medal positions in Tokyo and again at the 2023 and 2024 Worlds.