Erica Hawley is determined to put her best foot forward in front of her home crowd in tomorrow’s ITU Continental Cup.

The 18-year-old Bermudian triathlete is chomping at the bit to compete at this level again and is going in with plenty of momentum following a string of impressive performances overseas last month.

“I am excited to be racing another Continental Cup and I hope to get as many points as possible in order to help with Commonwealth Games selection and Worlds selection,” the University of Colorado freshman said. “There is definitely a strong but small field going in and I’m beyond excited.

“It feels weird that I’ll be racing at home, I almost feel too relaxed. But the atmosphere should be amazing and I hope there is a big crowd supporting us. I can’t wait to make my sponsors, family, friends and country proud.”

Hawley helped Colorado to the Collegiate Conference Championships at the Havasu Triathlons, placed second at the Central American and Caribbean Junior Elite Championship and fourth at the North American Junior Elite Championships last month.

“I’ve had a hectic last month with racing three times along with all the travel but, all things considered, I’m feeling strong,” Hawley said. “I’m feeling good and my training leading up to this has been going very well.

“School always makes getting a lot of volume in tricky. But I was lucky to have spring break last week and I spent it with my team in Florida where we put in some good solid hours of training.”

The Continental Cup consists of a 750m swim, 20km bike ride and 5km run and will be staged in and around Hamilton.

“The course is really fun. Very technical and Corkscrew Hill should be interesting,” Hawley said. “I actually rode the course at 5am on Tuesday and got a bit of the ‘lay of the land’.

“It’ll definitely test the field and potentially string the field out. But that just makes the race even more exciting because it might not end up being a ‘runners race’ like it so usually is.”

Also representing Bermuda in the ITU Continental Cup is University of Leeds freshman Tyler Smith, who placed ninth at last month’s North American Junior Elite Championships in Sarasota, Florida.

The ITU is making its first stop in Bermuda in two decades with about 40 elite international athletes expected on the start-line, among them Eli Hemming, of the United States, and Canada’s Dominika Jamnicky.