Further Success for North West Academy Athletes in Hungary.
In the UK the Youth age group is 15 and 16, in Europe it is 15, 16 and 17, the competition in the past has been a simple relay with 20 minutes of racing per leg approximately. This year the competition was on 3 days with individual semi-finals, finals and a mixed relay competition giving around 90 minutes of tough international racing over the 3 days. Our NW contingent made up 50% of the GB Team with Matt Willis – Silver medallist aged 16, Dan Slater aged 16 and Marcus Dey aged 15. Olivia Green is 16.
We arrived with the GB Elite Youth Team in the small Hungarian city Tiszaujvaros for 3 training days before the event to acclimatise to heat and to build a racing strategy.
The event consisted of male and female semi-finals on Saturday and finals on Monday with a 4 person mixed relay competition on Tuesday involving teams from 23 European countries.
Our team of 4 boys and 4 girls performed very well in the run up showing great commitment and adapting to the heat and learning how to hydrate properly. Selection had been from a previous qualification race at Hetton Lyons on 19th June.
In the semi-finals, Ellie Hobbs from South West could not compete as she was sick and Scotland’s Erin Wallace was brought down in the lead bike group and was unable to compete further. The races were very tactical as there were 9 qualifiers from each heat of three heats. Matt Willis, Dan Slater and Marcus Dey, all from the NW Academy, qualified comfortably. Marcus was brought down in the lead bike group having exited the water in 2nd place - he straightened his handlebars, remounted, time trialled the rest of the bike and put in a solid run to finish in 7th place. The 4th GB athlete, Ben Jones from the South West, qualified as a fastest loser.
In the girl’s semi-finals North West’s Olivia Green and Abbie Williams from Wales qualified comfortably.
All our athletes coped well with the heat which was around 35c with no signs of heat exhaustion or dehydration.
In the finals, Abbie exited mid to last 3rd of the swim, starting in the 2nd bike pack she got dropped from it after the 1st lap and ended in 3rd bike pack. She ran off to maintain 23rd place.
Olivia exited in the last 3rd from the water and was comfortable in the 3rd bike pack she ran well to record 8th fastest run and finished in 19th position. She cut her foot and was unable to take part in the relays the following day.
Matt exited the water in 14th place made the 2nd bike pack with a 10 second gap which merged with front group he rode steadily and was at the rear of a large pack into T2. It quickly settled to a group of 8 on the run which gradually became 2 with Matt forcing the pace and finishing in 2nd in a sprint finish to take the Silver medal against Portugal’s Vasco Vilaca (one year older, 4th at Lisbon, 1st at Quarteira ETU Junior Cup)
Marcus was 5th out of the water and stayed with the lead bike group. He raced smart and strong to finish in 14th place.
Dan exited the water in the back 3rd, getting trapped in the swim, he made the 3rd bike group. Unfortunately, the rest of the group weren’t strong enough to help him bridge across leaving him too much to do on the run to be in contention and doing all the work on the front of the bike group. He ran well to finish in 13th place recording the 6th fastest run split.
Ben finished in 19th place with a tough swim and bike he ran well.
The GB team in the relay consisted of Abbie, Dan, Ellie and Matt. There were 29 teams in the event with 23 country teams and 6 mixed European Teams. Marcus was placed in a team with athletes from Israel, Finland and Hungary.
We had a poor start on the 1st leg with Abbie getting a slow puncture on the bike, she was able to complete, but was dropped from the lead bike group. This gave Dan and Matt too much to do. Both raced hard and well but was it too much to ask to get near the podium and we finished in 9th position overall.
Marcus performed really well, but the other athletes in his team weren’t of a high enough standard to make an impression on the race.
We travelled back to the UK yesterday with 8 very happy athletes all of whom gave their best throughout the trip having had probably the best experience of their lives to date and all with very bright futures in triathlon.
The Triathlon England Talent Squad Head Coach Rick Velati who led the trip and has done 33 such trips/camps in the past was genuinely impressed with them all saying that it is one of the best group of young athletes that he has had the pleasure to work with.
All the results can be found here:
http://www.triathlon.org/results/result/2016_tiszaujvaros_etu_triathlon_youth_european_championships_festival/281283
There is no let-up – Matt is competing in the English Schools track 3000m on Saturday and the others along with 6 other Academy Members are at Eton Dorney for a British Super Series Triathlon event.
Mike Myers
Extremely proud
TENW Regional Academy Head Coach
