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Aileen Reid competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic games [Getty Images]
Ireland's most successful triathlete has backed the sport's return to her home city of Londonderry later this year.
Aileen Reid said Derry's hosting of the Europe Triathlon Cup in September will give the world's best triathletes "an excellent opportunity" to prepare for this year's World Triathlon Championship Finals.
She said the city was an "amazing venue" for an event which will bring world-class athletes to Northern Ireland.
Reid, now coaching in Australia, competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, is the only Irish athlete to win a medal at the World Triathlon Series event and was ranked in the world top 10 for three years running.
She described Derry as the perfect city for the 5 September Europe Triathlon Cup event.
"It's an amazing city and there's no better place to host it," she said.
"The roads are good, the course is technical and then you've got a fast-flowing tidal river.
Elite athletes love technical courses and City of Derry provides that."
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Ebrington will act as the race village during the September event [BBC]
The elite athletes will take on four short bike laps of the Foyle embankment, Foyle Road and Craigavon Bridge, before taking to the River Foyle for the swim leg.
The race village and finish line will centre around Ebrington Square in the Waterside.
Coming three weeks before the World Triathlon Championship Finals in the Spanish city of Pontevedra, Reid believes the Derry event is well timed to attract a high-end field of competitors.
"People have asked me about coming to the Derry race because they're thinking about coming," she said.
"The Australian team are talking about going to Derry and basing themselves there for a while and I said it's a fantastic idea."
She said the wider north west could also provide athletes with an ideal training location ahead of the season finale and she was hopeful the Derry event will spark interest among the next generation of would-be triathletes.
"There'll be kids standing watching the triathlon who'll end up competing because they watched people racing in their hometown," she said.
"That's what it's all about," she said.
Derry will host both women's and men's elite races as well as junior and amateur events during the September triathlon event.
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