Ellie McCartney 'delighted' with Youth Commonwealth Games result in the Caribbean as Enniskillen swimmer wins two gold medals and a bronze

The teenager from Enniskillen was always destined to make a big splash in the pool but has come a long way for when she first entered the water earning the nickname ‘Bob’ from her family as McCartney explains.

“My grandfather Raymond McCartney was the founder of the local swimming club the Enniskillen Lakelanders.

“Whenever I was six or seven it felt only right that I should be in that club, the same club as my dad and the one my grandad started.

“I think that is really where it kicked off, from there I started swimming competitively and won a couple of national titles.”

“When I first got into the pool, I just used to bob my head up and down to try and keep breathing so my parents called me ‘Bob’ because my head was going up and down.

“I think I won my first Irish title at 11 or 12 then I was making national teams from there, but I only made my first international team last year whenever I was 17.

“I was good to a certain level, but I just hadn’t made international yet then I finally did.

McCartney made the decision to leave her native Enniskillen and move close to the High Performance at Aurora in Bangor.

She added: “It was during lockdown we had time to think is this just a hobby or could it be something more than, in 2021 Swim Ireland created a high performance, so there was world class coaching, physio on hand, strength and conditioning, nutritionists so it was the ideal training environment for someone, and we knew that was the next step up.

“Two years when I was 16, I decided to make the move to Bangor for training, I moved school and relocated to live with some relatives and train in the high-performance centre.

“I always joke with my brother because he was going to university at the time that I moved out first even though I was younger, it was definitely a big move, but it was nice to see it paid off.”

McCartney had to juggle training for the Youth Commonwealth Games with studying for her A Levels.

“Swimming is one of those sports where you need a lot of time commitment, it is maybe 20 hours a week training in the pool and three gym sessions on top of that.

“It is definitely hard to balance school, but I was lucky that my school was about 100 metres away from the pool.

“I was quite fortunate I could come out of school (Glenlola Collegiate) and walk straight to training and I could walk to school after the early mornings.”

McCartney swims for the same club as multiple world and paralympic champion Bethany Firth.

“I actually represent Ards Swimming Club, so I would train along side Bethany Firth, she has literally done it all, she is Commonwealth and World champion, she is a world record holder, Paralympic champion everything, it is really nice to see to see someone so local do so well.

“I’d ask her how she deals with the nerves and how her preparations would be going for the next big competition, and she would definitely help me out if I ever needed it.

“Trinidad was the first time I had gone to an event where there was a bunch of sports, usually I just go to competitions, and it is all swimmers.

“It was nice to go and experience athletes from a range of different sports, a lot of us got chatting and were asking questions about how each other’s sports worked because we quite hadn’t understood how there’s went compared to ours.

At the Youth Commonwealth Games McCartney won gold in the 200m breaststroke and 200 individual medley and a bronze in the 100m breaststroke, despite having no expectations going to the Caribbean.

“I have always shown a lot of progress in breaststroke but only in the past two years my individual medley come along, it is a combination of all the strokes,” she continued.

“I wouldn’t have been able to have the success in the medley if it wasn’t for my breaststroke being so strong, but I’d definitely like to keep the two on because they go hand in hand with each other and I plan to keep doing them in the future.

“I had no idea because I had never competed in a commonwealth scenario, obviously it is a different range of countries compared to European and beforehand there is very limited information so I couldn’t see where I was ranked until I actually got out there.

“I could see I was close to medals, I did my heat swim and coming out of it I could see I was the top seed in the 200m breaststroke going into the final.

“Once you see that there is a good chance, but you do have to back it up with the final swim then, so I was delighted with two golds and a bronze.”

McCartney beat Team NI colleague Grace Davison in the 200m individual medley.

“Me and Grace represent Ards and we would train together quite a lot and are on a lot of relays together.

“We hold a couple of Irish records together which is nice, I really liked getting Northern Ireland 1 and 2 that was my favourite moment just to have both of us on top of the podium.

McCartney could be a bolter for the Paris Olympics next summer as the 18-year-old is on the move again.

“Paris is a bit tight because Irish swimming has come along at such great lengths in the past five years it makes it harder for me to make teams because there are already swimmers that have reached the level and it raises the standard for qualification in Ireland,” she explained.

“It is not to rule out, but it is definitely going to be tough.

“I got my A level results and I was happy to come away with two A stars and A, so I got into Limerick to study sports science and maybe go onto physiotherapy from there.

“I have chosen Limerick because of the training, the campus is well thought out, the school, the pool and accommodation are all within a five minute walk of each other so it is really ideal for me and they also have a national performance centre for swimming so it should work quite well and I know a lot of the swimmers done there have done pretty well so hopefully I can follow in their footsteps.”