The Sunny Coast 70.3 marks the traditional start of a new triathlon season, with many clubbies seeing it as an opportunity to either show the fruits of a winter spent working hard on the wind trainer, and pushing through cold and dark early morning sessions in the pool to prove the old saying that ‘summer’s wins are made in winter’… or sometimes it give other clubbies a chance to spend around 113km wishing they had spent a bit more time training.
But this has also typically been ont of the big ‘A Races’ for the club, both in terms of athletes competing and also in terms of our race day presence with support and 4th leg work being done up on the hill as part of Tri Club Village.
Unfortunately we still saw a bit of a hangover / lingering effects from a few years of much reduced particiaptin in the race overall thanks to COVID-19, but this year was definitely still not up to the levels of the ‘before times’ but it was a great opportunity for Bankers to get together and celebrate our achievements and get in some 4th leg practice.
The Results
Awesome work to all athletes who gave it at crack, and especially to all those Bankers who gave it their all in all 4 legs.
A summary of results from all the clubies on course are below (apologies if we have missed anyone – if so please let us know) and if you want to see in a bit more detail, check them out here.
Individuals
Teams
Highlights
There were some really great performances all around with a number of clubbies posting PBs and others coming together to make up some great team performances. The other real highlight for the day was a return to the 4th leg in the club tent up on the hill. Once again the SBTC tent was still pumping well after all of the other clubs and squads had packed-up and headed home.
A special shout-out to our Club Treasurer, Nicci Vinson, who led the supporting and 4th leg efforts in Tri-Club Village all day including cooking up bacon rolls to fuel supporters as well as providing some tunes through a portable speaker (which somehow managed to last the whole day – making it a very close second in the B.O.G. award 
) and also to our new Club President, Fi Fewtrell, who swam in a team and then headed up to the club tent to man the barbecue once hungy clubbies were looking for a burger to keep them going while supporting the final finishers out on course.
We couldn’t really have asked for better conditions, with the swim being super calm and the typicaly headwinds out on the highway being absent for most of the day. It did get pretty warm towards the end of the day, but overall it was a great day for some fast times…
Although those fast times need to come with a fairly big asterisk next to them as they had the starting signal set to rapid fire for the rolling start and so there was a whole lot of congestion on the bike course leading to some pretty ridiculous peletons forming and some people completely ignoing any sort of idea that this was meant to be a non-drafing event.
And also, some peanut put the turn-around at the wrong place in the highway, so the overall bike course was around 4.5km short (I *think* the turn was marked where the Moo Tri turn is supposed to be and this was just a stuff-up – but this hasn’t really been confirmed (or even acknowledged or even mentioned by Ironman… I guess they thought that 1,700 or so people would just not notice that the bike was 85km instead of 90… 
).
B.O.G. Award 
The award for ‘Best On Ground’ has to go to James Carty, who not only smashed out a massive PB for the overall 70.3 distance, but beat his previous best time for the swim leg by a massive 10 minutes !! And this was in a brand new wetsuit, which was hastily purchased at the merch tent as it was closing on Saturday night, as his pre-race swim familiarisation managed to tear a few rather large holes in his wetsuit 😲
And not only was his smashing his goals out on course, but he also managed to throw a handstand- and walk across the finish line on his hands – prompting a thoughrouly deserved golf-clap and a score of 7.5 out of 10 from the man on the mike, Pete Murray.
Photos
This race report was written by Matt Thompson. If any SBTC Clubbies want to put up their hand to write a race report for an upcoming event, please reach out to the Communications Officer at media@sbtc.com.au
