Western Lakes cyclist crowned Gael Force Queen champion for the 2nd time

Mary Mulchrone a native of Fahy Westport won back her Gael Force title after a one year lapse.

In 2008 race Mary was beaten by Jenny McCauley of Dublin who represented Ireland at the 2004 Olympic games In Athens (Greece) for Mountain biking.

In 2009 Mary took a more relaxed approach to training early on and only started thinking seriously about competing with 6 weeks to go after an encouraging personal best up the infamous Croagh Patrick climb.

This year’s event had a bumper field with over 2100 participants taking part in the 66k of multi discipline activities broken into 15k of road/cross country running, 1k of Kayaking, 45k of cycling and the tortuous 5k accent and decent of Croagh Patrick (The Reek).

Mary time of 4hrs and 16 minutes was 15minutes better than her nearest female competitor and good enough to get her 59th place overall.

Next challenge for Mary will be the newly organised Roar event on Saturday September 12th, like Gael Force it’s a multi discipline event based in Keel on Achill island, this is sure to be another big hit for tourism on Achill island as entries have already closed with 450 participants entered.

See results on www.roar.ie