Olympic Sports Awards 2025<\/a> at the weekend, but Cycling Ireland was one of the big winners on the night. It claimed the \u2018High Performance Programme of the Year\u2019 award, after seeing off Rowing Ireland and Swim Ireland.<\/p>\nThat fact the Cycling Ireland performance staff went up against their counterparts in rowing and swimming \u2013 two of the most successful high performance programmes in Irish sport \u2013 and beat them is a major coup for the organisation.<\/p>\n
It also represents a significant turnaround for the national governing body, which only a few years ago was mired in controversy under previous management, though the high performance programme was never part of that.<\/p>\n
Cycling Ireland\u2019s high performance head coach, Neill Delahaye, said 2025 had been an \u201can outstanding year\u201d for Irish cycling. It had been delivered after years of refining the high performance programme, he said, including putting in place development pathways.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe firmly believe we have some of the best cyclists in the world in our programmes and some of the best staff in the world in our HPU planning, delivering and administrating our activities,\u201d Delahaye added.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a federation and a HPU we are building capacity to develop and support world class performance with world class coaching, expertise and experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile 2025 has been hugely satisfying, we intend that this is a platform on which to build more robust systems that will continue to deliver consistent success at the highest level for many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Healy (EF Education EasyPost) and Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) were also nominated for awards. Gillespie was shortlisted for the \u2018Female Athlete of the Year\u2019 and Healy was nominated for the \u2018Male Athlete of the Year\u2019 \u2013 the two main categories in these annual awards.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Healy taking the Tour de France yellow jersey was shortlisted as the \u2018Sporting Moment of the Year\u2019. A public vote took place for the three categories the two riders were in. However, the \u2018High Performance Programme of the Year\u2019 award was not open to a public vote.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, neither Healy nor Gillespie came away with a gong as the male and female awards went to golfer Rory McIlroy and heptathlete Kate O\u2019Connor. The sporting moment of the year went to O\u2019Connor for her World Championships silver medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World and European champion, Lara Gillespie, who was also up for an award of her own, being interviewd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-335650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/xHP-1-1200x809.jpg.pagespeed.ic.crBrAebiLD.jpg\")
World and European champion, Lara Gillespie, who was also up for an award of her own, being interviewd by David Gillick, alongside Cycling Ireland\u2019s high performance coaches, award winners Martyn Irvine and Neill Delahaye, with chief executive James Quilligan looking on (Photo by David Fitzgerald-Sportsfile)<\/p>\n