2015 European Triathlon Championships
Despite having 3 of our Club athletes (Sarah Stephen, Shannon Botham, Jeremy Basset) qualify for this years ETU in Geneva, Switzerland. Only Jeremy was lucky enough to be able to represent us as a club and his home country of Switzerland. Jeremy had a fantastic race coming 7th in his age group. He has written a little about how it all went and the atmosphere of racing at a European event;
This year the European Championships were taking place in Geneva, which happens to be my hometown. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to represent Switzerland in front of our home crowd, so I decided to sign up for the sprint race. As I was just recovering from an injury I hadn’t been racing much prior to this race, but I felt quite confident since I knew the course and my swimming had improved so much in last couple of months (Thanks to Bex!!)
The sprint race was on Friday at 11, the weather was perfect for me (really warm though, about 36 degrees) and there were not too many waves. The atmosphere before the start of our race was electric, hundreds of age groupers were getting ready for a very fast race under very warm conditions. As soon as the gun went off it was carnage, arms and legs flying everywhere, I got kicked in the face but luckily my goggles stayed on. I got out of the water with a time of 10min 39s which I am quite happy about. The bike was made of three loops with one big climb (1km), followed by a long downhill, the rest was pretty much flat. It was great to see that so many spectators and friends showed up to support us! The run course was mostly in a park by the lake, I managed to pass most of the athletes who had beaten me on the bike and finished 7th in my age group.
I am quite pleased with that result, I realised that my cycling skills still need a lot of work…
By the way the afterparty was epic…ahah
- Jeremy Basset
