Triathlone 2009 – The Result

July 21st, 2009 by Gavin

before

I had mixed emotions after Triathlone this year. I was disappointed in my finishing position as at 9km I was feeling confident a podium place was mine

But as myself and ‘the Spanish Armada’ got in sight of the finish line I found I had no more gears – in hindsight I should maybe have gone a lot further out but then as the man says “hindsight is a mothermucker”.

The swim didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked. As we took out marks we were held for long enough for me to lose alance as flop into the water – the kayaks had been positioned behind the pontoon for some reason which meant a flase start could not have been brought back – I knew straight away I would be met in transition and that I would be held for 15seconds. This meant my pre race tactic of trying to go out hard on the bike with the 2 Frenchies went out the window.

Instead I rode up to the pack and settled in – we swopped turns for 2 laps quite well but when we reeled the French back in we lost focus and allowed the chase pack to get on.

In that pack was the eventual winner Brian Keane. We had a had a brief chat the day before about race tactics and I knew he would attack. If he did attack I would not help the chase and I would even go as far as impeeding it …. We took up another breif conversation

keano

and he was gone. He may be little but he has big balls !

His effort was truely worthy of winning the race. The kind of romantic way every athlete wants to win in front of a home crowd and for that I have nothing but praise for him . . . . I was asked a few times in the post race bar was I annoyed at being beaten by a fellow Irishman and my reply was always the same – “if he was a prick I probably would be, but he’s not! ” It was an inspiring result for everyone watching.

It was a good day for the Irish team with Aileen Morrison on the podium too in the womens race – in a race which pitted development squads from Australia, France, Spain and Belgium against our new Irish Development Sqaud I would say the Irish came out on top