Rhiannon Henry won her first gold medal in an international paratriathlon event at the weekend; a significant feat for any athlete, but even more so considering it was her first ever triathlon. With the experience gained, she’s now back at the British Paratriathlon training Hub in Loughborough and is targeting improvements in her strongest discipline, the swim, as well as bike and run.
Rhiannon, 27, won two bronze medals representing ParalympicsGB in the swimming pool in Athens in 2004. She again competed at the Paralympic Games in 2008 and 2012, before switching to cycling, in which she represented Wales at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Her background makes her one of British Paratriathlon’s exciting prospects for success this season.
Rhiannon took up triathlon in November, and now competes with a guide athlete in the visually impaired PT5 category. She spoke to British Triathlon after her gold medal winning success in South Africa.
“I first moved to Loughborough in November and started my triathlon training. I’ve been working with a male guide (Jack Peasgood), who guided for Dave Ellis last year, purely so I could get out on the tandem and the road and gain some experience.”
Late in 2014, British Triathlon launched the ‘Guide for Gold’ talent scheme to indentify new guides to work alongside athletes on the UK Sport Lottery Funded World Class Performance Squad.
“We all went on the Lanzarote camp together (in January). We were open-minded about switching round to see who was the best fit for whom.
“We had three rides with each guide, then the coaching team looked at guide availability and other technicalities to see who would work well with each other in South Africa. I was paired with Nicole (Walters).”
South Africa’s Buffalo City provided the backdrop to the first ITU World Paratriathlon Series event of 2015, with an eight-strong GB team kicking off their season.
“I found the whole experience really positive. I’ve been away with the team before in a training environment and I’ve trained a lot with them all, but to go away and to be racing with the same teammates and coaches that you see day-in, day-out, was great to be part of.
“It was completely new and different to competing in an international swimming or cycling race, purely because I didn’t have that pre-race confidence that I would usually have. The coaches and my guide made sure I was ok and were great at getting me prepared for it all.”
Alongside the pressure of going up against international rivals, Rhiannon faced tough competition from 2015 ITU World Paratriathlon silver medallist and GB teammate, Melissa Reid, lining up alongside her. Four minutes eventually separated the two, with Rhiannon coming out on top this time.
“I knew my swim would be strong because that’s obviously my big strength, but I just thought the other elements may be not quite up to scratch just yet.
“Considering I’ve not had much running training at all, I was really surprised to finish ahead of Melissa to be honest.”
Rhiannon will now wait and see which events she can get a start at during 2015: “Nothing’s really confirmed yet in terms of exact races because of the points situation, I’ve only just started building my points tally. But the one race that is confirmed is in South Wales (Llanelli ParaTriathlon, 16 May), which will be really special being only 30 minutes from my parents and my home town.
“After that, everything’s up in the air, but all the places listed on the ITU World Events calendar are places I haven’t raced before, so it’s all really exciting.”
What is certain is that the Bridgend-born talent has gained valuable experience that she can carry forward to her next international outing: “In the lead up to the race I was constantly asking Nicole questions and checking things all the time. I was concentrating on the finer details, so for example, you aren’t allowed to touch your bike before your helmet is clipped on and you have to make sure nothing is sticking out of your transition box when you put everything in. I had to think about all those aspects throughout.”
She added: “I learned a lot from that race; especially how I would feel going into the run. It was a shock to the system. But there are things to work on now.”
The focus will now be fairly general in terms of swimming, cycling and running so that she builds her natural endurance: “I took two years out of the pool; I’ve only been back since November, so I’m probably not back to where I was before. I haven’t really been cycling for that long either so there should be an upward curve there too.
“In terms of my competition, there are the two British girls that did phenomenally well last year and are always in the medals. There are key international competitors too.
“There could be people from other countries who, like myself, come from another sport, or who just come out of the woodwork, so I don’t want to just aim to beat someone who’s around now – I want to look at what potential I have.”
