Ellie Carmody rocks Rimini HYROX Championships in Italy taking first place back to Limerick

Ellie Carmody was welcomed home by her mum and two friends at Shannon Airport following her triumphant victory at the Rimini HYROX Championships. Photo: Richard Lynch/iloveimerick

Limerick athlete Ellie Carmody claimed the top spot in the Women’s Pro under-24 division at the Rimini HYROX Championships, earning a qualification for the HYROX World Championships

Limerick’s Ellie Carmody brought home a first-place finish at the Rimini HYROX Championships in Italy this past weekend where the young athlete fought off competition in a highly competitive Women’s Pro under-24 division.

Ellie, who finished with a time of one hour and 13 minutes, earned a qualification for the HYROX World Championship’s which she has deferred to 2026 to focus on her studies.

“ I’m not going to lie, I can’t believe that I came in first place in Rimini,” Ellie told I Love Limerick, adding, “It was my very first pro race and I was so unbelievably nervous. I was so nervous. It was kind of annoying as well because I competed on Friday, but there was another group competing on Saturday, so I didn’t actually know that I placed until Saturday evening.

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“In fairness, I have put in so much work training, I absolutely love training – I love training with people, I love training alone – I’ve put in the work, so it was just so amazing to actually see that pay off!”

HYROX combines both running & functional workout stations, where participants run 1km, followed by 1 functional workout station, repeated eight times.  Ellie’s journey in the discipline has been a relatively recent one, having joined her training group just 18 months ago until a friend at the gym asked if she would be interested in taking part in a competition.

Ellie said, “I was training in a CrossFit gym at the time, and to be honest, I’d never heard of HYROX before. One of the girls in the gym came to me and she was like, ‘Ellie, you like running, would you fancy doing a, a HYROX competition with me?’ So. Yeah, I suppose that’s, that’s how it all started.”

Ellie has been interested in running from a young age having competed in secondary school, recently running two entries in the Regeneron Great Limerick Run in one day, and people in Corbally will be familiar with her and her mum who run together, Ellie said, “If you’re from Corbally, you’ve probably seen me and my mom out running together. It’s mad the number of people that will come up to us and say, ‘Hey, you’re the mom and the daughter that run together’. And I’m just like, ‘Yeah, that’s us!’ I’ve always liked running, and then when I heard about HYROX, I thought, ‘Okay, this is perfect’.”

Bringing two of her favourite things together, CrossFit and running, Ellie went into her first competition with her gym-friend, saying, “To be honest, it was just a bit of fun. We didn’t really have any goals or anything. I got on well, and from there, that is when the addiction, the addiction began.”

Speaking about her local gym, Ellie said, “ I feel like the group that you train with is just so, so massively important. I’ve been so lucky to train with some amazing athletes and just such a supportive community. At the moment, I’m coaching and training over in HYROX Limerick, a gym on the Ballysimon Road, run by Tony Barry.

“It’s just been amazing. I haven’t even been there long, about two months now, I’d say, but it has just been so incredible. Everyone has been so welcoming, and the best thing about HYROX, in my opinion, is that anyone can do it. You do not have to be the fittest athlete, you don’t have to be able to lift crazy amounts of weight. It can be adapted, and it is suitable for absolutely everyone.”

Reflecting on her recent victory, Ellie said she felt an “imposter syndrome” in the build-up to the event while feeling the nerves of the competition, but said, “ I actually got a message from my dad just before I raced and he said, ‘Just go out there and give it your all. You deserve to win,’ I suppose that kind of stuck with me for the whole race. I was really doubting myself beforehand. I had such imposter syndrome. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ But that kind of stuck with me and I thought, ‘look, I deserve to be in this race.’

“I’ve put in the work. Let’s just go for it. It feels absolutely amazing. As a coach, I’m so used to supporting everyone and cheering everyone on, so it was so nice for the roles to kind of be reversed; it feels amazing. I am on cloud nine and I’m just in my element at the moment.”

Although her performance earned her a spot in the World Championships, with just two weeks to the 2025 World Championships in Chicago, Ellie has chosen to defer her spot to the 2026 edition of the competition due to financial and study constraints as a full-time student, she has seen the positive in the deferral.

Ellie told I Love Limerick, “As a college student, I just can’t afford that at the moment. So I’ve deferred my world qualification spot until next year. I’m not sure where it will be next year, but that just gives me time. I can’t wait. Preparation-wise, I’m just going to keep on training. I’m hungry for more now. I just want to keep improving my time and bettering myself, and just go for it. This is it now. This is really the start of my journey.”