My Week in Triathlon

What I’ve read and found interesting over the last week:

• Clash Miami results: Women 1) Lucy Byram, 2) Sif Bendix Madsen, 3) Pamella Oliveira. Men 1) Jason West, 2) Tom Bishop, 3) Daniel Baekkegard. Full results here

• Miami Talking Points: Sanders crashed out late into the bike. Bishop was superb all day only being passed in the last few kms. West had a superb run with a pace of 03:02/km for 16.8km. Byram hasn’t even been racing as a pro for two years yet and she won. Unranked Kaylee Slade had the fastest run time by almost two minutes.

• Arena Games Sursee results: Women 1) Zsanett Bragmayer, 2) Olivia Mathias, 3) Fanni Szalai. Men 1) Henri Schoeman, 2) Maxime Hueber-Moosbrugger, 3) Simon Westermann

• Sursee Talking Points: Szalai stole the show by racing bravely and coming 3rd…at 15yrs old! Mathias over-shared during the live post-race interview that virtual racing isn’t for her.

• Birth imminent: Joe Skipper pulled out of Clash Miami due to the travel being too close to his wife going into labour.

• IMSA Entry Numbers: There are many factors but the race entries for Ironman South Africa have dwindled. Of the years listed below, only 2018 had a full swim. As a baseline i’ve added the IMNZ numbers in brackets.

  • 2018: 2041 (IMNNZ: 1283)

  • 2019: 1987 (IMNZ: 1538)

  • 2020: Covid (IMNZ: 1393)

  • 2021: 1012 (IMNZ: 610)

  • 2022: 869 (IMNZ: 563)

  • 2023: 776 (IMNZ: 969)

• Quote: “I don’t like losing so I bring it home” - Zsanett Bragmayer

• Sanders Enigma: A few weeks ago I described Lionel Sanders as an enigma this year. To the script he heard Skipper and Luis pulled out of Clash Miami so phoned and asked if he could enter 4 days before race day. Sam Long seemed visibly irritated - especially when Lionel was still training late the night before the race. View here

• Surpas Surpasses: I saw Matt Trautman’s trisuit at IMSA and thought “hmmm, maybe I add it to my wish list for 2023”. Safe to say at EUR800 it surpassed my budget expectations! They claim an average performance improvement of 3.5%…enough to take me from 11th in my age-group to 7th at last year’s 70.3. Maybe I rather swim more than once a week?

• Astle day job: Did you know that Ruth Astle still keeps a day job at Lloyds a couple days a week? She won the Kona age-group race in 2019, IMSA as a pro in 2021 and 5th at IM world champs St Georges in 2022.

• Rinny Retires: Mirinda Carfrae announced on her YouTube that she’s formally retiring. It was a heartfelt video with many triathlon celebrities sending in a short tribute. She will be starting a coaching business.

• Challenge Roth: To reduce drafting they will be removing the motorbikes that give photographers access to the front of the cycle leg. Prominent photographer James Mitchell commented that it’s actually the live video moto that’s the issue and that they should put Race Ranger on the lead motorbikes. Unrelated, Sam Laidlow said Roth will be a good dress-rehearsal for Kona in 2024.

That's it for today, now finish your oats and get back to training! If you have any feedback or suggestions, please reply and let me know!

Yours in low CdA,

Aero MaccaFrodownlee

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