Katie-George Dunlevy, right, and pilot Linda Kelly of Ireland celebrate with their gold medals after winning in the women's B individual time trial on day seven of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. | Harry Murphy/Sportsfile via Getty Images

Going into Wednesday’s road para-cycling time trial in Paris, Katie-George Dunlevy was already the most successful Irish female Paralympian of all time.

Now 42, and assisted by debutant Games pilot Linda Kelly, she shows no signs of slowing down, winning more than 1 minute, 20 seconds clear of second-placed Sophie Unwin of Great Britain.

“Katie is a champion and an inspiration,” said Kelly afterwards — and that is true not only for people who, like Dunlevy, are visually impaired.

This remarkable athlete is also loved and appreciated by LGBTQ communities in Ireland and the U.K. having spoken with admirable candor in recent years about her delayed coming out journey.

Dunlevy, who still lives and trains in her English hometown of Crawley, was a two-time world para-rowing champion, representing Great Britain, when she began to experience significant injuries in 2006.

Struggling to get back into the GB mixed coxed four squad, and with little funding available, she explored the opportunity to represent Ireland, where her father was born.

But while trying out for the rowing squad, she was spotted by para-cycling coaches — and in 2012, she was racing at her first Paralympics, in both road and track.

She was also open about being gay. “I came out at the age of 29 and it ended up being positive for me, but until then I was in denial and hiding it for years,” reflected Dunlevy in an interview with ESPN in 2021.

“It was only until my relationship was serious that I told my family. But everyone has been fantastic, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and I was able to be who I am.”

“Growing up, my parents never spoke about it, and it wasn’t seen on TV or anything that I saw, so I never knew about it. When I was having these feelings when I was a youngster, I didn’t know what it was. It was just a very confusing time for me.”

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Her elite-level medal haul began in earnest with silver in the road race at the 2014 Para-cycling World Championships.

A decade on, she came to Paris with three gold medals and two silvers from the Rio and Tokyo Paralympics. In the velodrome Sunday, she added another silver in the B 3000m individual pursuit. Now she has that fourth gold — and there is still the road race to come Friday.

On her time trial triumph, she told RTE Sport: “I can’t believe I’ve retained my title from Tokyo and Rio.

“And with the medals from Orla (Comerford) and Róisín (Ní Riain) last night, it’s medals for Ireland from vision-impaired women.

“If there’s any child at home with vision impairment, hopefully they can have inspiration from us, that they can believe in anything and achieve.”

Dunlevy has long been a Paralympic role model but it’s still a more recent development for her to speak about being LGBTQ. The ESPN interview was published in the month after the Tokyo Games.

In that Q&A, she recognized how relatively “privileged” queer people are in Ireland, where LGBTQ rights have progressed rapidly in the space of a generation.

“You realize you can go around and hold your partner’s hand and most of the time, it is positive,” added Dunlevy.

“We’re really lucky in this country, in other countries you can’t do that. And just being able to be myself. This is who I am and really happy about that. That’s the best thing about it.”