Alastair MacKellar doubles up with Australian U23 men's time trial title

during the Menâ€™s U23 Individual Time Trial of the Australian National Road Race Championships at Buninyong in Ballarat, Victoria, Tuesday, January 10, 2023. Photo by (Con Chronis/AusCycling).

Alastair MacKellar (Israel Cycling Academy) on his way to victory in the U23 men's time trial at the AusCycling Road National Championships 2023 (Image credit: Con Chronis/AusCycling)

Alastair MacKellar (Israel Cycling Academy) swept up the U23 men's road race title at the AusCycling National Championships on Saturday with a scorching final lap solo providing a sign of what was to come on Tuesday when he also added victory in the U23 men's time trial to his result tally.

With a time of 36:49 MacKellar came over the line more than 1:25 ahead of his nearest rival in the 28.6km time trial, Oliver Bleddyn (ARA Skip Capital) while Zac Marriage (Team BridgeLane) came through the line a further ten seconds back to claim third.

"I honestly didn’t come here with those intentions so to be able to pull that off, it's pretty special,” said MacKellar of walking away from the 2023 championships with two titles.

“Never have I really targeted a TT this much, as a junior I did a couple but I really wanted to target this time trial and went all in with equipment and training for it.” he told SBS Sport.

The 20 year old, who signed with Israel Cycling Academy in 2021, is now saying goodbye to the Australian summer of cycling to head back to Europe to a team training camp with not one but two national jerseys in his suitcase as a result.

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Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.