'We're here because we deserve to be' – Irish cycling's journey from 'underdog' status to an unfazed force

It's 1987, and Irish cycling is on top of the world. Stephen Roche has become only the second rider, after Eddy Merckx, to complete the Triple Crown, and Sean Kelly has secured a record-breaking sixth Paris-Nice title. Flash forward almost four decades, and while Ireland might lack the Grand Tour or Monument favourites of Roche or Kelly, it has a new cast rapidly driving the nation back up to the top tier of cycling, whether that be on the tarmac or the track.

Ben Healy ended a 38-year dry spell since the last time an Irishman donned cycling's most iconic jersey when he finished third on stage 10 of this summer's Tour de France to take hold of the maillot jaune. That "fairytale" moment came just four days after he also became the seventh Irishman to have won a stage of the Tour, and the first since Sam Bennett in 2020.

Healy, who pledged his allegiance to Ireland in his teens via Cork- and Waterford-born grandparents, went on to score Ireland's first medal in the UCI Road World Championships elite men's road race since 1989, when he claimed bronze in Kigali, Rwanda.

Irish cycling didn't end 2025 without a coveted rainbow jersey, though, as Lara Gillespie became the nation's first-ever female track world champion when she thundered to Elimination Race gold in Santiago, Chile, in late October.

It capped off a stellar past 18 months for the 24-year-old. On the track, before her rainbow jersey, Gillespie made her Olympic debut in Paris, scored bronze in the 2024 Worlds' Points Race, and became European champion also in the Elimination. On the road, she completed her first Tour de France Femmes – narrowly missing out to Lorena Wiebes in the stage 4 sprint, added a second pro win in September, and a further seven top-three finishes across the 2025 season.

The pair may only be a year apart in age, but when it comes to their journeys to the pro ranks, the stage of their respective careers, and their goals for the years to come, they are distinctly different. Nonetheless, they've both pushed the Irish Tricolour back into the spotlight on some of the sport's biggest stages this season.

How Gillespie made up for lost time

Gillespie's rise to world champion is made even more impressive by the far-from-natural trajectory that the Wicklow-born rider took to get into professional cycling. After dabbling in countless sports during her childhood, she only began competitively cycling in her late teens. Yet even then, carving a career out of the sport didn't even fathom in the Irishwoman's plans.

"I didn't even know you could be a professional cyclist until maybe 2020. From a very young age, I remember saying to myself, 'I'm going to go to the Olympics'. I had a vision of becoming an Olympic champion, but I didn't have cycling in that vision whatsoever," Gillespie recalled, having originally planned to compete on the athletics track instead of in the velodrome.

"I definitely believe it's a case of 'see it, to believe it' because as a kid, I grew up watching Jessica Ennis-Hill on TV and being like 'Oh, I want to be an athlete, I want to do that.'"

In stark contrast, her early knowledge of cycling didn't extend beyond the Tour de France, and "I never saw women there," Gillespie explained. That lack of a visible pathway was compounded by a university degree to juggle alongside her training and chronic fatigue that stalled her progress throughout 2020 and 2021 as a result of surgery on a birth condition.

Irish cycling's limited funding and lack of an indoor velodrome also meant the current European and World track champion had to spend long periods of time away from home training in Mallorca, living in a house rented by the governing body.

Yet, in some ways, these barriers only served to embolden the now European and World track champion's resolve. Having graduated from university and returned to full fitness, she joined the UAE Development Team in 2023, with her season spent bouncing from training camps to Track World Cups to Classics in Northern Europe.

Gillespie relished the buzz, though, given the challenges she had overcome to get to this point. By the time 2024 rolled around, she would win a first Track Worlds medal, form part of a Team Pursuit squad that would finish 10th at the Olympics, and wrap up the year with her first pro win at the Antwerp Port Epic.

Irish stars on the world stage

Neither Healy nor Gillespie were surprised by their exploits in 2025, such was their mental belief and overall progression as athletes.

"I think after 2024, I believed that I could win a stage, and stage six [at the Tour] was the first really good one for me. Thankfully, it just all went right for the day," Healy explained.

Assured by his off-season training, Healy could see the year-on-year improvements in himself, making only minor tweaks to his physical training, such as additional gym work to strengthen his sprint.

"I think the real big difference maker for me was just the preparation, mentally, with the race reviews and work that I did going into races this year," continued the 2023 Giro d'Italia stage winner.

Healy added road race bronze to his Tour yellow jersey and stage win in September, with his 2025 palmarès also including a Liége-Bastogne-Liége podium too.

Widely seen as one of the toughest World Championship courses in recent memory thanks to its relentless parcours and low air quality, Healy's third-place finish is all the more imposing.

"The course lent itself to a super hard race. I was there for a week before, and honestly, I was struggling the whole time in training. I really thought I was not going to be very good, but I rode myself into the race.

"I took a mindset of just conserve, conserve, conserve. That really helped, and in the end, I had the legs for a really nice result," the Irishman reflected.

Gillespie, meanwhile, put a lot of the year's success down to the motivation driven by 2024's results.

"Putting the work into place started happening more on the road last year, rather than actually at the Olympics.

"I think it was more my Worlds medal when I won bronze, even though it's the year of the Olympics," the UAE Team ADQ rider continued. "Winning that medal meant a lot, and just kind of proved that I can do it. There's something about winning a Worlds medal."

Despite her Worlds and Olympic appearances in 2024, the winter leading into 2025 was still a process of finding her feet in the world of professional sport.

Gillespie was able to base herself in Germany during the early months of the year, which provided a consistent training routine and racing block.

"I feel really lucky, because coming from Ireland, it's a lot of travel. It's a lot of late-night flights, early-morning flights, and you're missing out on two training days a week, or two rest days a week. Whereas this year, I got really lucky, I was able to drive to every single Belgian race and get an extra two days of either recovery or proper training," she explained.

"Every winter is just getting a little bit better, and every race I'm learning a lot, because really, I still am quite a beginner in the elite side of the sport," added the 24-year-old.

Beginner or not, Gillespie already has a rainbow jersey to her name, something surely very few rookies can claim. But a career-defining moment? The Irishwoman doesn't quite see it that way.

"I think that is the goal of everyone who puts their mind to being a professional, to be a world champion. So you have to believe it's possible, and then it happened, which was amazing, but it doesn't mean that I want to stop," she explained frankly.

Perhaps by not being caught up in the world of cycling until a later age, or because of the competitive edge she's held throughout her life, Gillespie has a limitless mindset when it comes to achieving her goals.

"That's the joy of sport for me, there is always another step on the ladder. Unless you're someone who wins every single time, which we do have some of those riders in the sport, and I can't speak for them."

Beating the best

Both riders know full well what it's like to come up against prolific opponents, with their 2025 road seasons being dictated by them at times.

For Gillespie, of the eight races she podiumed in 2025, Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) won all five of the races they both started. She is certainly getting closer to the Dutch sprinting force, but has yet to get the better of her. Unsurprisingly, though, it's not dampening her resolve.

"When you're the same type of rider as Wiebes in this era, it is difficult. I saw an interview from someone saying 'just become a climber if you're a sprinter', but it isn't impossible with the right support and the right tactics," Gillespie said.

"I think you just have to appreciate that you are racing against one of the GOATs, you know?" was Healy's response when asked about the presence of Tadej Pogačar in the pro peloton – the Slovenian was on the top step for both of Healy's one-day podiums this season.

Healy brushed aside the natural frustration and highlighted the need to be even more consistent, to take advantage when Pogačar has a rare off moment.

"It doesn't change your preparation. If there's an opportunity to beat him, you just have to seize it because there aren't so many," he added.

Gillespie, who noted Katie Archibald as a similarly key rival on the track, reaffirmed her lack of fear towards the more experienced sprinters in the pack.

"You can't go into the race already thinking you've lost, because then you've already lost. So even if you are the underdog, even if you are from a smaller nation, even if you haven't proven yourself yet, you still have to believe it," she stated boldly.

Belief, not luck, of the Irish

Ireland might be a smaller nation in the cycling world, but does this 'underdog' status provide extra motivation on the world's stage? Gillespie strongly disagrees.

"I think it is more of a belief rather than a motivation," she remarked, clearly passionate about the subject, as she cited Portugal's stellar performance on the track at Paris 2024 with a budget nowhere near that of Team GB or other traditional cycling nations.

"You have to fully believe that you have everything you need to win, and that comes from within."

Only when she claimed gold in Chile did Gillespie think about Irish cycling's modest set-up, and their performance well exceeding external expectations.

"When I won, I was thinking 'Whoa, we did that, like just our small little family here, that we've travelled to all these countries for the last however many years. We did all those training sessions, basically with just the coach, the mechanic, the soigneur, and a couple of the girls. Our small but mighty team did that.'"

Healy felt that similar belief throughout his testing build-up to Rwanda. "Everyone's there behind you. They believed in me and supported our singular goal.

"I was feeling pretty crap in the week before, but I knew so much work had gone into it, I just couldn't drop my head," the Irishman admitted.

Gillespie puts this shift in success down to the mindset across Cycling Ireland, with more visible pathways into the WorldTour, and Track World Championships appearing in front of the riders' eyes.

Cycling Ireland came under fire in 2022 when it admitted to sending "false quotations" for government grants, leading to a 12-month suspension on its access to capital funding.

"A lot got changed behind the scenes [since then]," Healy highlighted. "They were in a really difficult situation, but honestly, the work they're doing now is just actually pretty incredible."

The nation is now consistently picking up medals at major championships across the age groups, and the idea of being a 'smaller cycling nation' in the first place is almost dismissed on mention.

"Martyn Irvine [former Scratch world champion and road pro] has been running the men's program, and he would get so angry if anyone said something like 'but we're a small nation, we don't belong in this place' or 'we don't deserve to win something because we're a small nation.'

"We're here because we deserve to be here and we can win."

Gillespie and Healy are both looking to 2026 and beyond with the hope of continuing Irish cycling's charge back to cycling's top table.

For Healy, his continued one-day success makes him a marked card, but that isn't deterring the 25-year-old from eyeing several targets next season.

"I think for sure the Tour is always going to be a massive target for me. But I think I proved to myself this year that I can have three really good peaks during the season," Healy said, with the Road World Championships in Canada expected to rank high on his hitlist.

Meanwhile, Gillespie's track pedigree means she's already looking at the four- and eight-year Olympic cycles.

"On the long scale, at Los Angeles 2028, the focus is on the track, because the road course is very hilly. In the next couple of years, though, the Classics on the road are more important to me."

Ireland has never won an Olympic medal in any cycling discipline, so LA28 could serve as a sliding doors moment where Healy, Gillespie, or another talent rising through the ranks could claim another historic first in the green, white, and orange. It might be over two years away, but there's no shortage of belief already.