Pembs Juniors Help Lift Wales to Highest Ever IRC placing
Glasgow 2nd September 2006
Report by Les Watson
Pembs Tri Juniors once again had three Club athletes selected to compete for Wales in the Inter Regional Championships held this year in Glasgow on 1st September. Alex Matchett made the squad for the third year running, this time in the Tristar 3 age group following his comprehensive 100% winning record in all Welsh Series events this year and becoming Welsh Series winner. He was joined by Welsh Series second placed Jake Watson in Tristar 3. Luke Watson also made the Welsh team for the second year running competing in the Youth category where Luke finished the season as Welsh Series winner.
It’s a long way to Glasgow so we all set off a couple of days in advance thus ensuring a decent preview of the venue and course before the actual event day. This was not necessarily the best preparation as it turned out due to the very technical bike course (hilly, tight turns, uneven, moss covered areas) putting a degree of apprehension in the minds. This was particularly so in Luke’s case following his disastrous crash out in Llanelli earlier in the year. On race day the weather was lousy making it a dangerous course where several athletes crashed, fortunately the Pembs boys got through unscathed.
Jake and Alex worked out their tactics in the pool and both swum well to emerge a little over halfway down the field in 13th and 15th. Alex maintained his position through the bike but Jake slipped five places on the difficult course despite working very hard in the rain. A fine run from Alex (8th fastest) picked up his finishing position to 14th and he collected 48 points for the Welsh team. Jake took a while for his legs to recover from the bike and didn’t really look himself until the last lap of the run. He was unable to improve his placing and finished 18th collecting 32 points for the team.
A larger field in the Youth event saw Luke have a reasonable swim and come out of the water towards the rear of a large group of athletes in 19th position. His bike was far too tentative due to undoubted nervousness on the slippery areas and he disappointingly dropped a couple of places. However he rallied admirably on the run with the 9th fastest time and this raised him up to 18th position with 49 points collected for the team.
The IRC is a team event and there was very good spirit amongst the Welsh squad and supporters. Despite the long journey and miserable conditions on the day everyone was extremely excited by the performance of the team as they finished in their highest ever position of 5th place. This was one better than last year and just a single point ahead of the sixth placed region. This illustrates the importance that every point really matters and the Pembs boys played a great part in securing this famous result.
The team points scores are shown in the table and the full race results can be found on the hyper-link below:
http://www.britishtriathlon.org/news/article.php?id=8612
REGION |
POINTS |
South East |
1113 |
Scotland |
1041 |
Eastern |
891 |
North East |
877 |
Wales |
766 |
East Midlands |
765 |
North West |
729 |
South West |
682 |
West Midlands |
512 |
Yorkshire & Humberside |
477 |
London |
394 |