Hamilton and McCartin Aquabike Champions 2021

Ross Hamilton and Olivia McCartin are 2021 Aquabike National Champions after showing the strongest displays of swim-biking among two competitive fields at Lough Cutra Triathlon Festival on Sunday.

Hamilton covered the 1,500m swim in 25mins 41secs – the quickest of all the men’s field. He followed this up with a T1 of 2mins 16secs before powering to the quickest bike split of the day (59mins 43secs) to finish up with 1hr 25mins 41secs on the clock and a national title in the bag.

Second place went to Ruaidhrí Geraghty from Galway TC, who one day after his silver medal winning exploits in the Mixed Team Relay Champs bagged himself more silver by way of a 26mins 16secs swim, a 1min 55secs T1 and a 1hr 58secs bike leg.

Killian Nolan finished in the bronze medal position a little over two minutes back – he was out of the water ahead of both Hamilton and Geraghty before slipping back a little through T1 and on the bike which he performed in 2mins 19secs and 1hr 3mins 41secs respectively.

In the women’s race, Olivia McCartin swam herself to a national title with her 28mins 21secs split making the difference in an otherwise tight battle with second placed athlete Celine McPhilips.

McCartin’s swim was 1min 23secs quicker than McPhilips’s and with both women only 5secs apart in T1 and an incredible 2 secs apart over the 40km bike route the gap didn’t move much once the pair were on dry land.

In the end McCartin crossed the line in 1hr 41mins 56secs with McPhilips finishing up 1min 29secs later to claim silver.

Bronze went to Deborah Carr in 1hr 52mins 09secs, two minutes clear of a pack of closely bunched competitors that made up the top seven in the women’s field.

You can see provisional results from the Aquabike National Championships on StuWeb