A little bit of a bitter sweet weekend over in Penticton. The race was unfortunately cancelled due to wild fires that had spread across British Columbia and in return made the air quality super bad. At one point, it was literally raining ash!!
I had prepared well for the race and its unique format and I felt like I had put myself in a good position to gain a golden ticket. The TT was always going to be my weakest discipline in comparison to the long course opponents who honestly had quads the size of tree trunks. These guys were always going to be gun riders and I had already excepted that before the race had begun.
I went into day 2 with 80 odd seconds down on the leader. Fortunately, I had a solid group around me with the two Schofield twins from Australia both being solid across all three disciplines so this didn’t worry me too much. The plan was to tag team with them and use our good swim/run and short course ability to build back the time lost.
The anticipation and planning for day 2/3 was short lived as the thick smoke came in causing the event to be cancelled. Despite this the team at SuperLeague were fantastic and kept us in check with regular updates causing none of the athletes to get stressed or concerned and for that I can’t thank them enough.
Despite the unfortunate weekend I’m absolutely frothing to get out and race in Jersey and can’t wait to have all my buddies and family down on the course heckling me along! Last years’ experience of watching the race as a spectator was incredible so words can’t describe how excited I am to get out and rip it around with the world’s best.
5 weeks now until the big day and speaking to coach Saunders it sounds like I’ve certainly got my work cut out…
Until then, PEACE!
Ollie Turner - Triathlete 