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.

European Triathlon Championships 2006

European Triathlon Championships - 2006

Our trip to the European Triathlon Championships, at Autun Bourgogne France, began with the receipt of the following letter from British Triathlon. 

After I had achieved the necessary results in the qualification races I submitted my application and was selected to represent Great Britain. 

Being Francophiles we decided to make a weeks holiday out of the event and drove to Autun in plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere of the European Championships.

ETU Poster

First item on the agenda was a Friday evening 'Parade of Nations' where the local children lead out the representing triathletes from each country.

At the parade I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to meet and have a long chat about the 'good old days' with Sarah Springman whom I had always admired and hadn't seen in action since the early 1990's. We talked about The British Grand Prix Series and the Ironbridge Triathlon from that era and the size of the GB Team, and of course inevitably how did you qualify?

Sarah Springman O.B.E. C.B.E  and me.

Sarah represented Great Britain at the elite level from 1983 to 1993, competing in the 1990 Commonwealth Games Triathlon, New Zealand. She amassed 20 Elite ETU European Championships, as well as finishing fifth at the Hawaii Ironman World Championships in 1985 (1st Brit.) and in 1987 and at the Nice International Triathlon in 1985. Sarah claims her best achievement was a resting Heart Rate of 28 Beats per Minute. 

Prior to her current position of Vice President of the International Triathlon Union and President of British Triathlon Sarah was a Professor at the Institute for Geo-Technical Engineering, Zurich ETH University. After the European Championships Sarah went on to win the Winter World Triathlon Championships in her age group in 2006 and was a bronze medallist in the Vancouver Sprint Triathlon in 2008. (I hope I got it right this time Sarah)

On Saturday morning we had the official team photograph on the town hall steps.

Where's Wally ?   (5th row from the front, 2nd in LH side)

The size of the British Team, by far the biggest, was a little controversial at the championships, but no doubt reflected the growing popularity of triathlon in Great Britain and the hard work of British Triathlon in promoting triathletes and maximising on the places available in the Championships. This number of people however covered all the categories: Elite, Disabled, Junior, Sprint, Relay, Male/Female as well as the different Age Groups in which I was competing. 

Serious preparation from the support team

I had been out on the bike Friday afternoon reconnoitring the course, the temperature had been 28C and the weather forecast for the weekend was to get hotter and culminate in a thunderstorm some time Sunday afternoon. My race was scheduled for Sunday 3:00pm.

A chance to have a look at the race venue prior to registration and bike check-in.

Race Ready

Psyching-Up for The Event

Sound Advice! I think its that way!

The short course championship event consisted of a 1500 metre open water Swim, 40km Bike and 10km Run. 

Due to the water temperature of the lake wetsuits had been banned, it was so hot that I don't think you could have survived in a wetsuit out of the water. 

Getting into position for the start of the swim and the first clouds of the weekend appear..

It's one of those things that no matter how big the lake or even when in the sea everybody seems to want swim the same line, so the swim was congested. Swim starts have been described as 'an in the water rugby tackle' I think it is something akin to being in a washing machine, but after swimming over one or two others and being swum over, swallowing water and replacing goggles it all settled into a good sprint. I had previously walked round the lake several times to get my bearings and to find some distinctive landmarks, as a result I had no problems navigating the course successfully. 

The bike course consisted of two laps, typically French it included a big climb out to a forest with a fearsome straight fast descent back into town that included a hairpin bend at the bottom. I rode the first lap hard but within my limits, by the second lap thick black clouds had started to amass in the sky so I put the hammer down as no way did I fancy 40+ mph descents, braking hard for a hairpin bend or slippery man-hole covers in torrential rain.

I just got back to transition, racked the bike and set of running when the heavens opened.

Always a grimace!

The run course was 4 laps of the lake and it was just one of those rare occasions that all you runners will know, when you just feel you can go faster and faster!

Grimacing for my country.

It's a great feeling when you feel strong and there is no better time than when you are representing your country.

 The British Team - Allez, Allez, Allez....

At the Finish

I found all these photographs backed up on a disc, and the original results from the event are lost, probably in the great fire. The photographs are not of a great quality, back then cameras were only 2 mega pixels, but they certainly brought back happy memories for me. If I remember rightly I finished 36 out of 55 in the 45-49 male age-group race, with a time of 3hrs 01min 27secs.

It is not often in life you get to experience something like this, I had plugged away at my sport, triathlon, from its earliest beginnings in this country, for nearly forty years a true weekend warrior. I had dreamt like most people do of 'representing their country' but never thought I could achieve it especially in a short course event like this, maybe in a long course, my speciality, but hey that's a story for another blog.

and just like my mate Bob, I scrub up pretty well, now where's that bottle of champagne?