3 members of the Isle of Wight triathlon club travelled up to Buckinghamshire to race at the Dorney Lake triathlon. Ben & Lottie-Rose Van der Helstraete along with Millie Williams were all competing in the sprint distance event which consisted of a 750m lake swim, a 20k bike finishing off with a 5 kilometre run.
First up were the two girls with the added pressure that they were both trying to qualify for a place to represent team GB as an age group athlete in the 2022 sprint distance world championship, meaning they had to finish in the top 4 spots in their respective age groups. Both girls swam well with Lottie exiting the water in a swift 12:16 followed by Millie in 13:45, onto their bikes they jumped with both cycling hard and fast averaging over 20MPH for the 20k bike course, into T2 they flew and straight out for the last & fast 5k run both pushing hard having already been racing for nearly an hour but not knowing where they stood in the race for the qualification spots because of the staggered start meant there was no time to let up. Both ran incredibly well with fantastic finish times of 1:16:29 for 18yr old Millie and 1:16:59 for 16 yr old Lottie. Both girls performed amazingly well and gave it everything they had and were rewarded with automatic qualification to represent Team GB as AG athletes at the 2022 World champs.
Next up was Ben. Two days after his 15th birthday Ben competing in his first sprint triathlon was in and out of the swim in a flash with an impressive time of 11:56 which was the 8th fastest swim overall out of the whole field, out onto the bike course and Ben backed up his fast swim with an impressive bike coming into T2 with an avg bike speed of over 30KPH, a really solid run brought ben across the line in 1:22:48 finishing a fantastic 3rd U20 on the day.
Brilliant racing all round.
