Busselton 70.3

Well, wow, that was a day.

Firstly, let me apologise. I was hoping to do a post last night, but I was simply too tired after the day at Busso. My bad. Here we are now though.

But well, what can I say, it really was a  crazy day out there yesterday.

The day was crazy for a number of reasons, firstly because of the weather, man did that forecast come true. Madness. The second reason for why the day was a crazy one is because of what happened in the Women's race. I don't think anyone saw that coming.

So, first up the weather. What a day, that storm hit with all the force that the forecast said it might. When the race reports talk about 50km/h winds they are not kidding, standing at the swim start the winds were 'push you sideways' sort of strong. It was fierce and the oceans terrible.

The strong winds forced the decision for the swim to be cancelled. As happens anytime the decision is made to cancel the swim due to weather, there were plenty of people saying they should have run it anyway, 'Triathlon is meant to be hard' is the usual catchphrase. No doubt some people could have swum that course yesterday, it would have sucked but I know I could have done it. But does the fact that some people could have swum mean they should have done the swim, of course not, I completely agree with the decision to cancel it, the water was insane out there. If they had pushed ahead with the swim all that would have resulted is that half the field would have been DNS and then somebody would have drowned. A bunch of people withdrew even without the swim, participants would have fled for the doors if the organisers had tried to do the swim. Is it really worth alienating half the field and putting lives at risk so that a percentage of the field can have a 'full triathlon', I don't think so. Right call all the way. Those whinging that the swim was cancelled are lucky that the entire event wasn't cancelled, which I suspect was under consideration such was the wind strength. In fact after the swim was cancelled Crowie got up in front of the crowd and said pretty much just that, people should feel lucky that they have an event at all, plenty of other events would have pulled the plug completely. Something is better than nothing.

Whether the swim should have gone ahead or not is almost a moot point because my understanding is that the call was actually made my Ironman. They got in and pulled the pin before Triathlon WA or the Surf Life Savers. If Ironman says it isn't going to happen, the race organisers don't have many options after that. In the end though the Surf Life Savers couldn't even get out to lay the course, when that happens you know it is time to pack away your wetsuit.

For me, the more pertinent question was, 'whether it was safe enough to ride'. I was very keen for the race to occur in one way or another, but not if it meant that a lot of inexperienced athletes were going to end up in ditches from cyclonic winds and wet roads. In the end, while the ride was very, very tough, and extremely unpleasant for some people, it also seems to have been pretty safe. There were crashes (there always are), but I haven't heard of any particularly bad ones. It may have been a case of the bad conditions made everybody that bit more careful perhaps. Whatever the reason I was very happy to see such little carnage. Super tough day though that will live on in memory for some time to come. I really have to take my hat off to anyone who headed out yesterday and particularly for those that made it through.

On a personal note it was a pretty good day for my athletes. Given the changed race format it makes it hard to compare times to previous years etc, but for most of my athletes just being out there and getting to the finish line was an achievement. For some this was a goal they have been dreaming of for years. For those athletes that were more time focused, indications are that they would have been on track for PBs, so pretty solid results there. Out of my athletes one secured a slot to the World Champs in South Africa and another had the fastest run time of all the women, including the pros. So I am pretty proud of those results. A couple other of my athletes headed out and had good days, despite being terrified of the conditions and so I am pretty proud of those too. All up it was a day where you couldn't help but feel admiration for those out racing.

So what about the pointy end of the race. What was going on there?

Well first up I would just like to point out that I totally called it last Friday, so you know, kudos to me.

I said Terenzo would win and man did he WIN. That wasn't a victory, that was domination. When a guy gets off the bike 10 minutes ahead of people like Crowie and Callum Millward you know you have seen something special. To come out and set a bike record on a day like yesterday was just phenomenal. While Terenzo may have made the men's race a little predictable, it was also amazing to watch. Superhuman. Crowie's gut shutting down with a couple of kms to go forcing him to stop, opening the door for Callum to make the pass was at least a little bit of excitement, the day was all about Terenzo though. On the outward leg of the bike with the wind behind him he averaged 48km/h. On wet roads. I am just going to leave that there for a while for it to soak in for you.

On to the Women's race, and well I sort of called that too. My pick was that Emily Loughnan was going to surprise everyone, would be the top placed WA woman and was a good chance for the podium and I very nearly got that all correct. I also said that Sarah Crowley would win and I was pretty close on that one too. However, in the end all my predictions about the women were incorrect, although I don't feel too bad about that because I don't think anyone would have foreseen the disqualification of the top 3 finishers. Who could have seen that coming?

Okay, so what the hell happened out there? So here is what I can surmise, I haven't spoken about this to Emily, because quite frankly it is a sensitive topic and she might want a bit of space, but this is what I could glean from Busso yesterday.

The women got out off the bike, Emily was a bit back but rapidly started making up space. Early on she caught the leaders, seemed to pause briefly to settle and then took off. On lap three she just put in distance and finished up 4 minutes clear of Sarah Crowley. A fairly massive achievement on debut. Needless to say the crowd was fairly eating itself with excitement. The fact that Emily ran down the field was amazing, but not unbelievable, she is an amazing runner, it was within the realm of credibility for her to win.

However, not long after the finish Sarah raised a protest. There was only one person ahead of Sarah and that was Emily so we figured that the protest was about Emily. We also knew the protest must have been about the run because Emily hadn't been near Sarah on the bike. There aren't many things to protest about on the run so we figured it must have been course related, but we didn't really know much more than that. From what we heard the lead bike had turned early at the far turn around of the run and some of the women had followed. Our best guess is that the protest was related to that. My guess would be that Emily mistakenly turned early on at least one of the laps, potentially being led by the lead bike. It is an understandable mistake to make as the Busselton Ironman run course and the Busselton Half Ironman follow the same road, but the Ironman run course turns earlier, if somebody is very familiar with the Ironman course it would be easy for them to get the two confused. Anyway, that is just speculation, but it is an credible theory.

So, Sarah raised a protest and Emily was disqualified and disappeared from the results and briefly Sarah was crowned winner. That is when things got really zany. As I said above, when the lead bike turned early, the rider stated that several women followed. I would guess those women included Sarah Crowley, Christine Cross and Emily Loughnan. My speculation is that as they investigated the protest raised by Sarah they realised that all three women had inadvertently cut the course and as a result they had no choice but to DQ all three.

All up it was a pretty unfortunate and sad way for the day to finish. One of the commentators, Simon Beaumont, summed it up well at the end of the day, he said that with such a tough day out what the race really needed was a fairy tale finish and Emily's win had provided that. A good news story. With her disqualification and the subsequent disqualification of Sarah and Christine it just made a tale of woe that much worse.

The disqualification was completely understandable and the technical officials really had no choice. The rules are very clear, cutting the course is a disqualification offence and it is the responsibility of athletes to know the course. It is pretty clear cut. However, I am sure it gave them no pleasure at all to have to follow through on that rule and to disqualify three amazingly talented and hard working athletes. Sad outcome really, but an unavoidable decision.

Putting the sadness of it to one side for a moment though, I have to take a moment to step back and bask in the awesomeness of Emily's performance. Yes she must have run short, but not by a lot. She won by 4 MINUTES over some of the best triathletes in the world. That is a massive achievement. Yes there was no swim leg, but do you know what Emily does almost as well as she runs, she swims. Having a swim leg would not have slowed her down one iota. Yesterday was not her day, but rest assured her day will come. The race yesterday just showed the rest of the world what she is capable of. It is very cool to consider what her future may hold. I am sure the DQ yesterday has knocked her back a bit, but she seems to have come out of it fairly positive, so hopefully that means she will be back soon, ready and raring to go. I am pretty sure she will.

Okay, fanboy rant over.

So that was that. An amazing crazy day of ups and downs. I think I am still getting over it a little bit and all I did was watch. Hardly a successful day from a race organiser point of view, really through no fault of their own, but that is a whole other topic that I think I will write about tomorrow. For the competitors though I think it will be a day that is long remembered and talked about. A day of brave and courageous performances, of facing fears and getting on with it, really the sort of day that Ironman is all about, or at least it should be.

Hats off to everyone.