World Triathlon Championships 2002

The good news arrives! 

I had been selected to join the Great Britain Age Group Team and represent Great Britain in the 2002 International Triathlon Union, Long Course, World Championships. 

The world championships in 2002 were to be held in Nice France, an area that I am very familiar with having been on holiday there several times and also having competed in the Nice Triathlon, 11 years earlier, in 1991. The bad news was that it is a 2.5 mile sea swim, 87 miles on the bike and a 18.5 mile run, but hey, long course is supposedly my speciality!

The Event Poster

I lost most of the photographs we had from the 2002 World Championships but finding some on the internet  prompted me to write this blog. (So apology for the low-res images off the web)

I found this photo taken of the team just prior to "The Parade of Nations" and I am sat right in the middle. 



Race preparations start early, before dawn, with the moon just setting over the Baie Des Anges (Bay of Angels) 




It is very surreal walking through the city streets of Nice in the dark, carrying all your kit,  making your way to the start before daybreak. The previous evenings revellers are just coming out of the nightclubs and the road cleaners are washing the streets down. You have to be there early, preparation involves pumping tyres up to racing pressure, putting water bottles in cages, laying out cycling shoes, running shoes, glasses and helmet, putting on wetsuit, hat and goggles, then working out your position in transition (there are 2,400 other bikes racked there), making note of the entrance and exits into and out of transition, sighting the buoys & landmarks now that it's coming daylight and getting down onto the beach to find a good start position for the swim.

Then at 7:00 am the gun goes off and 2,400 triathletes charge into the water for the start of the 4km swim and the 2002 World Long Course Triathlon Championships.

Mass swim starts are like a rugby scrum in the water, in the first few hundred metres you will be swum over and swim over others, you will be punched, kicked, and have your goggles knocked off but none of it is intentional, it's accidental, and soon you get a little more space. 

Then you start to notice the down draft and roar from the TV helicopters just above you and see and the divers with TV cameras on the seabed below filming the spectacle. After about 500m it becomes chaotic and congested again as you reach the first buoy and turn through 90 degrees to swim parallel to the beach. 

Swimmers start to thin out and as it's a very long way to the next turn you concentrate on calming your breathing and your heart rate, and concentrate on your technique and navigation. Its not always easy to see where you are going, your eyes are literally level with the water, there is a slight swell in the sea and at times you're swimming into the sun which is rising over the horizon, so spotting and keeping an eye on the next buoy a few hundred metres off, is difficult. 

But after several turns and kilometres its time to exit the water, this is tricky as cold water on the inner ear can effect balance, legs feel a bit rubbery, waves keep pushing you down and your wetsuit has collected several kilos of sea water and is pulling you back as you try to gain a purchase on the pebble beach.  

Then it's into transition, off with the wetsuit on with the helmet and out on the bike for the 85 mile ride. The French don't think its a proper bike race if you don't go over a mountain or two so it's up into the Alpes-Maritimes, and the first climb is the Col de Vence, not a particularly steep climb but 20km long and with an altitude of 3,200 ft (and don't forget you did start it from sea-level!)

"Attacking on the Col de Vance" 

The descents are generally smooth, fast and with a few hairpin bends thrown in. So it's an opportunity to gain time, if you can put a bit of distance between yourself and the others just before you crest the summit, then you get a clean descent picking your line and using all the road, which is closed to traffic.

Eventually after 140km and approx 4,000ft of climbing you arrive back in Nice and its straight into transition, rack the bike, remove the helmet and change cycling shoes for running shoes and then it's out on the 40km run.

Four laps of the Promenade des Anglais, but by now it is mid afternoon, the sun is high and it's well over 25°C in the shade. Due to the heat the Sapeurs-Pompiers (French Fire Brigade) have erected a wide, long gantry full of shower-heads spraying cold water that you run through on each lap, and even though you get soaked and end up with very wet running shoes it's most welcome and much appreciated.

Then like all good things it's nearly over and as you reach the final mile the GB Team Manager passes you a Union Jack to carry over the finish line.