Named in honour of the late Fairweather (nee Gallagher) – a Triathlon Australia Hall of Famer, world title winner and Commonwealth Games marathon bronze medallist –  the event attracted quality fields across a variety of different races.

However, the class of the two Bathurst Wallabies came to the fore as Stapley was the outright winner of the solo sprint and Patterson won her age category in the standard distance event.

Patterson tackled a 1.5km swim, 40km cycle then 10km run. Her finishing time of 2:37.25 not only saw her claim the honours for her 40-44 years women’s age division, but rank as the ninth fastest female competitor overall.

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She covered the swim in 19:17 to be second out of the water in her division, but it was on the cycle leg where she set up her victory.

She covered the 40km in 1:16.31 – an effort only two females across the entire field bettered – and maintained her lead with a 1:01.36 run split.

Stapley also set up his success with a strong bike leg, the result surprising him as his training has been built around the prospect of tackling longer distance triathlons.

“It was a little bit of a sneaky one for me, I wasn’t actually planning on doing it until early last week. It was a last minute decision and I’m glad I made it because it paid off,” Stapley said.

“My old coach Mel Ashton, she knew Jackie quite well and she took us all along to the first incarnation of this race back in 2015 and that was great. That was the last time I did a sprint distance race and I actually got the win there in my age group event.

“I’m with a new coach now, Cam Watt, and he knew Jackie quite well also, so we decided to use this as a bit of a hit out for me and just test the legs over the short distance.

“For me my focus for next year is the long course, so I didn’t want to over-cook myself over an Olympic distance race and because I was just training right through as well, the distance made sense.

“I was really happy with it, I was a bit down out of the water and quite a way down from one of the young guns that were there and I had a great bike.”

The cold conditions meant the 750 metres swim leg in Lake Burley Griffin was a wetsuit one, and while Stapley clocked a 12:24 split, he felt he could have done better.

However, the weather played into his hands when it came to the cycle leg. His split of 32.45 was the quickest of the 70 competitors in the field and handed him the lead.

He backed that up with a 18:43 run for an overall time of 1:03.53, beating home talented teenager Tomm Jansen by five seconds.

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“It was extremely windy conditions, the water was very choppy and I didn’t have a good swim. But the wind sort of suited me a little bit on the bike, it was hard and it wasn’t as fast as it would usually be, but I was just about to put the power down,” he said.

“I got back up to the leader and put a minute and a half into him by the end of the 20 kay bike, I caught him by the end of lap one.

“Then I set off into the run, the young fella had quite a bit of run speed, he’d been doing a lot of ITU stuff and the super sprint racing, so he was a fast runner. I thought I was going to get run down, I only ended up winning by a few seconds. I don’t have the speed much anymore now that I’m doing the longer stuff, so it was good that I was able to hold on.”