Kiely & O’Keeffe Grab the Crowns at King of the Hill

Cork Tri was out in force for the return of King of the Hill triathlon in Kinsale, providing the race itself and the top athletes in Round 14 of the Triathlon National Series.

The race, now hitting its second decade of stagings had athletes swimming 750m in the beautiful but famously chilly Dock Beach, tackling a fast and technical 23km bike course and then facing the infamous hill on both the way out and way back of the 5km run course.

And with a healthy falling of rain, plus a spirited wind, it was going to be a race to remember.

O’Keeffe Leads from Start to Finish

In the women’s race, Amy O’Keeffe put herself in front from the start, emerging from the water in 00:10:02 about half a minute ahead of second quickest swimmer Meadhbh Moynihan from Crosshaven Tri Club.

A quickest bike split of the day (00:44:18) kept O’Keeffe clear in 1st in to T2 but behind her every place was being hotly contested. After a 00:10:53 swim and a bike that was just 41secs slower than O’Keeffe Waterford TC’s Aine Kinsella put in the run split of the day, an ultra quick 00:20:11 over an extremely hilly course.

Kinsella was closing fast but ultimately O’Keeffe had done enough earlier in the race and she won by 31secs. Kinsella was next in 2nd and Cork TC’s Annemarie Power finished out the podium in 3rd four minutes later.

Kiely Claims Men’s Crown

Men’s winner Donnacha Kiely worked hard for his victory over the testing course. He swam a strong time of 00:09:29 and was part of a string of male swimmers about a minute back on race leaders Sebastian Helka and Tom McEnery.

Kiely made up most of the ground on the bike where he posted an impressive 00:37:28 – almost a minute quicker than the next fastest rider on the day to come in to T2 in the lead. He never looked like surrendering this advantage on the run and following a joint quickest run split of the day (00:18:17, which incredibly was matched by both Michael Scully and Tom McEnery), Kiely crossed the line to win his first King of the Hill title in 01:07:23.

Trevor Woods was 2nd on 01:09:08 – the 6th time he’s appeared on the podium at King of the Hill in the last eight stagings of the race.

In third on 01:10:31 was Sebastian Helka – another serial King of the Hill podium claimant. Helka has finished in 2nd or 3rd place at the race every year since 2017.

Results and Images

Provisional Results from all the AGs at King of the Hill are on SportsSplits.com

We’ll also have a full gallery of pics from Michael Buckley up here soon.

Next Rounds

The National Series heads north next with Round 16 at Top of the Mourne Triathlon and Round 17 at Loughrea. Best four results including at least one sprint and one standard count – enter your National Series event on our Race Calendar.