Taking place on Sunday 8 August, the 255 Triathlon took place at Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit and challenged participants to a 5km swim, 200km bike and 50km run either as individuals or in a teams.
Following a deep-water mass start, the traffic-free course saw the first finisher, Dean Kirkham, cross the line in 10 hours, 55 minutes and 39 seconds, with Gill Fullen, the fastest female reaching the finish in 12 hours, 34 minutes and 23 seconds.
Mat Dowle, race director of the event, said: “I’ve done over 20 IRONMAN’s myself, so it was something that I really wanted to do.
“I thought it’d be nice to have something a bit longer than an IRONMAN, but I’m personally not a fan of multiday events, I think that’s a totally different kind of event. I think it’s quite nice to come up with something a bit fresh and a bit new.
“Considering we only we came up the idea and opened entries quite late, six months of so before the event, considering that I was quite surprised how many solo entries we got.”
Also racing at Goodwood was former Great Britain Age-Group Team athlete Claire Danson who finished in 14 hours, 8 minutes and 31 seconds. Following an accident that left her paralysed from the waist down, Danson has been making a comeback to swim, bike, run by taking part in paratriathlon races as a PTWC athlete.
Following the first edition of the event this year, Dowle and the team at Tribourne have already opened entries for 2022, with hopes that this could be the start of a new wave of long distance triathlon events.
With this long distance challenge available for teams as well as individuals, many clubs and groups teamed up to conquer the 255km, which is close to 20km longer than the iron-distance. The multi-lap legs could be completed by any number of team members, meaning it was up to each team to devise their own way of reaching the finish line.
With team members able to swap at the end of each lap as many times throughout a leg and the overall race, teamwork came to the fore to demonstrate individual and collective strength. The flexibility of the race meant that the number in each team, distance covered by each member and the order of members could be decided and changed by each team throughout the race.
In total, 67 teams took part in the race, with a combination of all male, all female and mixed teams competing. The top three relay teams were: The Legion of TriSurrey (male), Velo Club Godalming and Haslemere 1 (male) and TriLife Trotters (mixed).
“I like the idea of being able to do relay where you’re still doing all three disciplines,” Dowle added. “Giving people the flexibility to swap over whenever they want then opens it up to people who like doing short course stuff and people who like doing long course stuff.
“It’s got complete flexibility which I think really allows teams to adapt. We specifically targeted clubs and you can really play to the strengths of the members of the clubs. We had some clubs that really were there in force with a lot of teams. I’d like to see it become an annual battle between the clubs.
“The solo part of it was the original vision and that’s something we don’t want to lose sight of, however the relay format is something I think will become really big. I suspect we won’t have huge numbers of people doing the solo each year but I think the number of relay teams could really grow.”
Photo credit: My Sport Photos
