Ellie McCartney swam three events in Swim Ireland’s new Super Series at the National Aquatic Centre in Dublin on Friday last. It was the 16 year old’s first short course meet since December last year.
Ellie spent the week leading up to the event as part of an invited squad on a camp at the NAC, training and team building with the other high-performance athletes including several of Ireland’s recent Olympians from Tokyo.
The competition is a Grand Prix-style event, and will take place across four half-day meets, two short course (25m pool) and two long course (50m pool), with each round (two meets) covering the full Olympic Programme.
The local swimmer had relocated to the newly formed high-performance centre, National Centre Ulster, in September at Bangor’s Aurora 50m pool and is swimming out of the Ards swimming club. With a new school, new club & coach, Ellie was eager to see what lay ahead.
The first event was 100m IM and Ellie finished third in a time of 1:03.94 smashing her short course PB by almost 4 seconds.
Ten minutes later the swimmer was back in the pool for the 100m Breaststroke finishing second just outside her PB.
Later in the session, Ellie smashed her personal best in the gruelling 400m IM by more than 10 seconds recording a time of 4:54.29 and finishing first in this final event.
The next Super Series event is towards the end of November.
Ellie is currently working with Swim Ireland National Performance Manager, Andy Reid and latterly Davy Johnston from the National Centre Ulster and has been able to take advantage of the vast international experience of these coaches along with an increase of hours in a long course facility and a dedicated strength and conditioning program from the Sport Northern Ireland Sports Institute.
The Enniskillen teenager has also received the support of the Mary Peters Trust who have helped financially this year once again towards the costs and expenses for this season as well as Fermanagh Trust who supported Ellie over the least three years.
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