Name: Lara Gillespie
Event: Track Cycling - Team pursuit, madison and omnium
Age: 23
Lara Gillespie has won Irish titles on road, track and in cyclo-cross. Gillespie, from Enniskerry, won double gold at the Under-23 European Track Championships in 2023 in the omnium and points races.
She was also the first Irish woman to win a medal at a World juniors event. Gillespie won two stages of the Giro Mediterraneo Rosa in Italy earlier this year and is currently riding for professional team UAE Team ADQ, where her results for their development squad this summer have seen her promoted to their World Tour team in June.
At this year's senior Europeans Gillespie was just pipped for bronze in the Omnium but managed a third place finish in the same discipline later in the year at the Ghent International at the start of July.
The women's team pursuit is the first time a squad have qualified in the event for Ireland. They qualified after ranking sixth at the end of the qualification period in April. The team opened their season finishing fourth in the UEC European Track Championships in January and claimed silver in the UCI Nations Cup in Hong Kong in March, where they also set a new national record.
