Ireland's Colin Lynch has won the silver medal in the C2 Time Trial Road Race at the Paralympic Games in Rio.
Lynch had always targeted a medal at these games and never looked in doubt of slipping out of the top three as he powered around two laps of the 10km road course in Pontal.
Canada's Tristen Chernove took gold in a time of 27:43.16, with Lynch second in 28:02.25 and China's Guihua Liang taking the bronze medal in 28:17.77.
Earlier in the Games, Lynch finished fifth in the Individual Pursuit competition, narrowly missing out on a bronze medal ride-off. At the 2012 Paralympic Games in London Lynch missed out on a track medal by one tenth of a second.
Lynch grew up in Canada but his father is from Drogheda and he has always had an Irish passport.
He took up competitive cycling in 2008 and pursued his competitive career winning his first time trial world title in 2011. In 2015, Lynch one two golds on the UCI World Cup Circuit and this year won a silver in the 3km Pursuit at the World Track Championships.
Ireland's Colin Lynch speaks about winning silver in the C2 time trial at the Paralympic Games in Rio. https://t.co/vjsx9gakhL
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) September 14, 2016
"It's an amazing feeling. I had tears in my eyes up on the podium," he told RTÉ Sport after the medal ceremony.
"It's the culmination of four years of work and I couldn't be prouder to represent my country and win this medal."
Lynch started strongly and was comfortably in second place at the half-way stage completing his first of two laps in a time of 14:37.66.
However the Irishman trailed leader Chernove by 11.97 seconds, and while he improved on his time in the second lap, knocking over 47 seconds off his first 10k, Chernove did likewise and held on to take the gold.
Lynch was not too downbeat however, and now has an Olympic silver medal to go along with his Para-Cycling Road World Cup gold and silver medals.
"I put all year into this one ride today and I’m pretty pleased," he said. "I would have loved to have won the gold and it was obviously close but to come away with a medal, it’s a four-year dream.
"At the halfway point I knew that I was only 11 seconds down so I was driving as hard as I could to make that up. The other guy didn’t take too much more time out of me but it was a tough day out there with a lot of wind.
"I gave it everything I had right to the line so there was no more I could have done."
Four years ago, Lynch was .01 away from winning a medal in the pursuit event at the London games and the cyclist revealed that going that close was his biggest motivation this time out.
"It's been a driving force," he said. "If I had won medals back then I'm not sure I would have had the same drive to carry on and do this.
"You can get much stronger in defeat sometimes than you can in victory. I learned a lot of lessons and put it all in the bank.
"I said all along that any medal was going to be a phenomenal achievement up against the best in the world.
"To be able to stand on a podium now in front of millions of people of television and in front of my friends and family back home.....it’s just a way to pay everybody back, from the coaches to the staff."
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