The Aon triathlons for 2015, including our national sprint distance championship, a team race and junior events, were held on Sunday 17 May 2015 at Clearwater Beach. A huge well done and thank you to our sponsors Aon, as well as to Race Director James Davis and Laurence Noble and his impressive team of volunteers, many of them Aon staff members.
Many congratulations to Tyler Smith and Martina Olcheski – Bell, who were crowned as our AON national sprint distance champions.
16 year old Tyler continued his impressive season, which has seen him qualify for the 16 – 19 Junior Elite World Championships. He dominated the field from the start to win by three minutes and a half minutes. He posted a fast 9:32 for the 750 meter swim, with Olympic Distance National Triathlon champion Jon Herring and Karl Wilson next out of the water 1.5 minutes behind.
Tyler soon dispelled any hope the chasers might have had of catching him. He completed the 20km bike ride in 32:50, the day’s second fastest time. He started the 5km run with a comfortable lead but increased it with the fastest time of 19:10–over a minute quicker than the next quickest run time. Tyler’s overall time was 1:02:14. Behind him Jon Herring stayed comfortably in 2nd place, finishing in 1:05:49. Tucker Murphy placed 3rd and veteran Neil de ste Croix grabbed 4th, helped by the fastest bike split.
Martina has had a fantastic season. She completed the double, having won the national Olympic distance championships last month. Once again she took advantage of Karen Smith’s inability to complete the run due to a recurring foot injury to post an impressive win. Martina continues to improve with each race.
Martina exited the water with Karen in 11:57, but Karen was quicker out of transition. Martina then virtually matched Karen on the bike, posting a time of 36:57 to Karen’s 36:51, and entered transition just 30 secs in arrears. Once Karen withdrew early in the run, Martina was not going to be caught. She completed the 5km run in 23:55 to finish in 1:13:56. This was good enough for 12th place overall. Kristen Palmer took another strong podium position as she finished second in 1:16:19, and Amber Mehta was third in 1:17:40.
There were a total of 61 finishers.
In the day’s other races:
- The team event was won by the Bicycle Works Babes (Belinda Castree, Wenda Roberts and Zoe Roberts)
- The junior racing bike event was won by Blake Oliveira, followed by Eddie Norman and Rory Fleming.
- The junior BMX/mountain bike event was won by Jake Brislane, with Logan Butterfield and Nicholas Southern in second and third.
