IT ALL BEGAN for Josephine Healion at a leisurely Vision Ireland try-out day.
The national charity invited people with a vision impairment to trial tandem cycling, and she went along with her sister.
That soon took over their school summer holidays.
At the age of 19, the siblings joined the local Tullamore Cycling and Touring Club.
“I treated it as a summer activity because I was in college full-time and went away travelling after,” Healion explains.
Working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic ultimately allowed her more time to get back into the cycling club. Competing was suggested to her, and Paralympic medallist Francine Meehan soon reached out to coach her.
“Fran had been there, worn the t-shirt, got the medals. She said, ‘You can definitely take this to the next level if you want’. At the time, my life was in the right place. It was the right time for me.
“I was encouraged by all of the things that she said, nothing that she said deterred me from it. I was actually getting more and more enthusiastic about it, I could really see this for myself. I really applied myself at the time and wanted to take it to this level.”
Now, after a “massive learning curve”, Healion is set to compete at her first Paralympic Games.
Paris was “the big picture goal” when she started training three years ago. It slowly started to become a reality when she joined the Cycling Ireland high performance team last January, and two months later, quit her day job as a learning and development support specialist at a cyber security company.
“I quit my 9-5 back in March of last year and went full time in sport,” the Tullamore 28-year-old says.
“It was a tough decision really. My role didn’t lend me the position that I could just take additional leave to do what I’m doing. Unfortunately the company didn’t have the resources to cover my slot when I wasn’t there. It wouldn’t have been possible to continue working.
“To be honest, it did limit my training time as well. Obviously I wanted to put in more hours and really go hell for leather and try get to the Games. That was the goal at the time and I really believed that that was possible. I don’t have any regrets over my decision.”
Why would she when she’s gearing up for four days of action at the Paralympics?
There are two Irish women’s tandems set to compete: Healion and Katie-George Dunlevy, with pilots Eve McCrystal and Linda Kelly. The pairings are yet to be confirmed, but they could potentially swap for track and road.
They have altered of late. Dunlevy and McCrystal have been an iconic duo through the years, but Healion has made brilliant progress. In her first year of competitive cycling, she and Kelly won a bronze medal at the 2022 World Championships.
Dunlevy has had a challenging year, crashing twice at World Cup events in May: first with Kelly, hurting her arm and her pilot suffering concussion, and a week later, she shattered her collarbone in a crash with McCrystal. The 42-year-old, requiring surgery, remarkably finished the race and qualified for her fourth Games.
This is the similarly long-serving McCrystal’s third and final Paralympics, while it’s Kelly’s first.
Both tandems will be right in the mix as medal prospects. It’s widely expected Team GB will be targetting one-two-threes, while Poland and France are also strong.
A pairing decision is imminent from Cycling Ireland, but whoever she competes with, Helion is ready.
“People have different styles of riding, it’s just about time in the saddle with that person and it just comes natural over time,” she concludes.
“You kind of just fit in with whatever they do — that’s what I do anyway.”
