Kelly Murphy
Cycling
BIOGRAPHY
Kelly Murphy represented Ireland as part of the women’s team pursuit at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – the first time Ireland had ever qualified in the event.
The quartet of Murphy, Lara Gillespie, Mia Griffin and Alice Sharpe set a new national record of 4:12.447 in the qualifying round but finished 9th, missing the next round by just 0.242 seconds. Murphy’s Olympic journey is one of sport’s more unlikely stories. Born in Birmingham to Irish parents – her father Gerry from Roscommon and her mother Ellen from Dublin, who happened to have grown up as neighbours – she only took up cycling in her mid-twenties as a means of commuting, using a bike to cut a 90-minute public transport journey to university in half.
Two weeks after completing a PhD in brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience at Aston University, she received an unexpected call from Cycling Ireland. She has since won four Irish Time Trial titles on the road. Ireland was the only one of the ten qualifying nations without a home velodrome, with the squad doing the bulk of their training at the Cycling Ireland base in Mallorca.
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CYCLING NEWS
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In The News – April 13th
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In the News – 9 March 2026
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Team Ireland EYOF Medallists 1991 – 2024
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