Hillingdon May 07 Press Release

By Peter Metalli

HILLINGDON SPRING DUATHLON 2007

The Tristars were in action at the first major event of the season at the Hillingdon Duathlon and despite many of them taking part in their first event ever, provided excitement throughout the day with numerous sprint finishes.

James Babington led the club home with a superb joint win in the T1 boys’ category.  James had a 7 second advantage over the rest of the boys after the first run and bike leg and despite taking a wrong turn back into the transition area, held off a strong sprint finish from Johnny Pitts.  The judges could not separate the two on the line and gave the first-ever joint finish in the history of the event.

 In the same category, two other TVT members were involved in another sprint finish with Robert Goodwin and Thomas Symss, both crossing the line together.  On this occasion, Robert was just given the edge by one second in 21:11 for 4^th and 5^th places.

In the girls’ T1 category, Ellie Vietz also finished in 4^th place after a good bike leg and despite a valiant final run was just overhauled for the medals.  4^th place is getting to be a bit of a habit for Ellie after Crawley and Bicester Triathlons last year but I am sure it will not be long before she starts collecting podium places.

 With both T1 and T2 categories covering the same distances of 750 metres, 4.5km bike and 1500 metres, direct comparisons could be made between the younger and older athletes and Robert’s older brother, Nicholas had a similar hard effort as he fought back hard with a strong final run leg and another sprint finish to claim 4^th place by one second in a time of 19:25.

 For the girls Katie Metalli led the challenge in the T2s and hauled herself back into 2^nd place with the fastest bike leg of the day of any sex or age-group but was then overhauled by Eliza Cottington from Thames Turbo and then agonisingly in yet another dash for the line and despite being given equal time, just lost the nod of the judges as Armanni Antoine-Chegar claimed 3^rd.  Although TVT are a South East based club, Katie has opted to race in the London Region this year and now lies in equal 2^nd place overall in the Series but with only the top two to go the national champs in September, looks set to have a real battle with the other two London girls with just 4 points between the 3 of them.

 Andy Vietz, who as Katie is in her first year of the older category showed a big improvement on the bike section to finish in 10^th place overall.

 In the T3 categories, the athletes covered the same run distances but had an extra 1500m lap on the bike and for TVT, Harry Weald finished in 11^th place with James Dale in his first event just one place behind in 12^th.

 Both of these two boys lost chains on the bike section (Harry on two occasions) and along with two other club members suffering similar problems has left  Coach Nick B muttering about needing to organise a bike maintenance session before the next event!

 The final TVT member was another who was taking part in her first event with Nick’s 6 year old daughter Amy, who fell and badly cut her knee just before the race but still managed to provide the final excitement with yet another sprint finish as she claimed 5^th place by just 3 seconds!