With the 2026 Ironman World Championship recently taking place in Kona, Hawaii, there has been much hype around the triathlon. The combination of running, cycling and swimming makes for a daunting gauntlet, but luckily here at UCD there is a club in which budding triathletes can cut their teeth! To find out more, we spoke with club president, Steven Whitehead.
Alongside skill and dedicated training, one essential skill of the triathlete is resilience, and this has most certainly been displayed by the club’s organisers. As with many organisations across campus, the triathlon club was discontinued in 2021, and later re-established in 2024. Having become the club’s first president following its re-establishment and remaining in the role since, Steven charted the club’s meteoric rise. It has gone from strength to strength; the committee has grown from three to twenty and from seventeen members to a recent total of over one hundred and fifty. Last year, the club had victorious athletes in both the male and female categories in the Tribesman Galway Race. The club competes in 5-6 races as part of the Triathlon Ireland national series and will compete in the Duathlon Inter-varsities in April and the Triathlon Inter-varsities in June. The club has sent members to the Ironman competition with a group to set out and will send a group to Portugal in April to compete in the Ironman.
A key part of triathlons is preparation and training; as such, it comes as no surprise that the club’s main activity comprises training. The club hosts run, cycle and swim sessions at the running track, the spin studio and the pool. They are forming a high-performance team and will be hosting their first annual athlete awards night in November.
While triathlons and athletics more generally can sometimes seem a lonely endeavour, Steven told us one of the best parts of the club is the community, fun and consistency around training and competing. The club welcomes athletes of all levels and has partnered with Triathlon Ireland and receives training from Tiago Dias of Endurance Lab. Run sessions can include up to fifty athletes, while the new high performance team will be limited to ten. Either way, the training can offer athletes a great social outlet and a sense of collegiality. However, the club has endeavoured to form a social element beyond the running track, and to this end the club hosts quiz nights and coffee mornings to promote a social side of the club alongside the training and competing.
It is very fair to say that from disestablishment in 2021 to its reemergence and growth since 2024, the UCD Triathlon Club is one of UCD’s sports success stories and undoubtedly shall continue to go the distance and from strength to strength.
By: Darragh Sinnott, Sports Editor