The most decorated Irish Paralympic athlete of all time, Katie-George Dunlevy, discovered she had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder of the eyes that causes loss of vision, when she was not yet 12 years old.
Now the English-born, out gay athlete, who won a gold and two silver medals at this year’s Paralympics in Paris, hopes to inspire visually impaired children and the LGBTQ+ community.
On losing her sight at such a young age, Dunlevy said: “I didn’t understand because I was used to seeing what I could see and didn’t know what everyone else could see.”
For Dunlevy, it was running and rowing first, and at 17 Britain selected her for the Blind Sports European Championships, where she won bronze in 400m. At university in Southampton she became more serious about rowing and received a call from a British rowing coach to try out.
However, paracycling coach Brian Nugent threw a lifeline. With her core strength and cardio, he asked if she wanted to try out cycling. A couple of months later Dunlevy arrived in Ireland. She tried out and was selected for the World Championships at the end of the year, winning a silver medal in the road race.
“One of the reasons to carry on is to inspire visually impaired children and the LGBTQ+ community, just to give anyone hope to be themselves.”
“I think you find at a lot of awards the Olympic medal would seem higher than a Paralympic medal, which shouldn’t be the case. So, a silver Olympic medal would be seen as something higher than a gold Paralympic medal. Right. You just go, eh, what do you need to do as a Paralympic athlete to been seen? So, there are barriers.”
“But one of the reasons to carry on is to inspire visually impaired children and the LGBTQ+ community, just to give anyone hope to be themselves.
“I want to go to schools to show my medals to the children and let them hold my medals because I didn’t have that as a kid,” she says.
“If I can inspire anyone just not to give up, that’s my job done. It will have been worth it.
“Coming out, I denied it. I was very confused.”
