Let’s kick off in sunny Lisbon where Tom Bishop, Heather Sellars and Jessica Learmonth were racing on Saturday in the elite races and Alistair Cooke in the Age Group race as part of the ETU European Championships weekend. Tom finished as 3rd Brit with a fantastic swim coming out of the water in 7th, just seconds behind the infamous Richard Varga, then notching up a few places to 4th on the bike with after riding like the wind for the team, and finally finishing in 19th, just over two minutes behind the winner Gomez. A tremendous race.

Onto the ladies where Heather Sellars finished as 2nd Brit home and 7th lady, just over a minute behind the winner and team mate India Lee.  You must be pleased with that performance Heather! Jess finished in 20th position, quoted as a disappointing day for her and gave it her all – still an exceedingly fast race Jess! 🙂 A huge well done from Jackpot HQ!

Alistair Cooke had the race of his life in the standard distance on Sunday at Lisbon.  Against high competition, Alistair popped a 22 minute swim, a 1:05 bike and a 35 minute run (FAST!) and finished 12th overall in the 35-39 age category and 4th Brit home. A fine race Alistair!

Back in Little Britain and down to Bosworth Water in Leicestershire and we have a WIN! From Claire Pickersgill!  Claire stormed to victory over the (long swim long bike) standard distance race and off road run run in road shoes (some lovely blisters to match) leaving competitors in the dust. Claire finished over 6 minutes ahead of the 2nd lady!  What a race! Just superb racing! Next race for Claire will be in Leeds in a couple of weeks. Watch out ladies 🙂

Ian Gilham in search of his place for Kitzbuhel for the 2017 European Champs nailed it at the Shropshire Triathlon on Sunday finishing 2nd in his age group in the standard distance race…’had a good swim (found some good feet for a change) solid bike but the wheels came off for a bit on the second half of a hot and hilly run – tried to chase down the leading guy in my age group but happy to hang on to my second place in the end’…GREAT GOING IAN! And congratulations on your place for Kitzbuhel!

All the shires – Tim Ashelford was 2nd overall at the Hertfordshire standard distance Triathlon on Sunday! Racing around in a Number ‘1’ was not adding too much pressure to his day!

Finally, Tom Linton-Neal (with a nicely mending broken toe if you will remember the x-ray image) raced to gold at the Chorlton Cross Triathlon.  The course was a 750m in Chorlton Water Park, a 15km off-road bike followed by a fast 5km run.  Tom finished 2 minutes ahead of second position!

A great weekend of Racing for Jackpot. Next week…news from the Duathlon Champs in Spain!

Sunday saw sprint races at the Southport Triathlon (BUCS Standard distance champs as well as ITU Age Group Qualifier) and down at Eton Dorney AND the sun was shining!

Will Cowen (Loughborough University) raced to 7th overall in a time of 1:56:10 at Southport including a speedy 36 minute 10k, and completing the race in just over 5 mins behind race leader. Tremendous racing Will!

Chloe Scotchbrook (University of Leeds) raced to 17th lady overall in a time of 2:23:18 (superb swim in there!).  Top racing Chloe 🙂

And some top photography from the day:

Further south at the Nuffield Health Eton Sprints , Mika Brown and Ian Gilham (hot off the plane from Yokohama) both put in fantastic performances.  Mika smashed out a very speedy race, finishing 8th overall and 3rd in age group – this means a qualification spot for Mika for the ITU World Champs in Mexico this year. Great going Mika!

Ian Gilham in the same race popped a 6th position in age group.  Ian did not have the swim he hoped for which meant because this was a draft legal race, he could not get in a fast pack on the bike.  This in turn meant Ian would have had to run like Mo Farah on the run section!  Lots of learning for everyone with the drafting idea – especially when Ian is back to the standard distance (non drafting) next week in Shropshire chasing an age group spot for the Europeans in Kitzbuhel in 2017.  Well done Ian and best of luck next week!

Three of our Jackpoters raced at Yokohama this weekend: Adam Bowden, Tom Bishop and Ian Gilham!  Adam and Tom both raced on Saturday making for a cracking and oh-so-close race for a podium. This being Adam’s favourite all time race, Adam finished 12th overall within a minute of the winner Mario Mola – it was literally seconds between Adam and Mario on the swim and bike sections – Adam’s 10k time was a ridiculously fast 30:23!  Tom finished as 3rd elite Brit and 49th overall, again putting in an extremely strong bike giving his fellow competitors something to worry about.  Fantastic racing both!

Ian raced in the age group category at Yokohama…”Inspired by watching Tom Bishop and the other GB guys boss the bike in the elite race on Saturday!”

“Tremendously well organised and supported race (felt like half the town had volunteered as marshals and the other half were out in the streets cheering!) lead to a great atmosphere through out the whole course.

Had a decent swim (despite the attentions of a few jelly fish) (same jellyfish possibly from Mallorca last week!) – out of the water 5th on the first lap slipping to 8th by the end of the swim (is it me or do all of those buoys look the same?). Got passed by a couple of folks on the bike but managed to regain a couple of places on the run to finish 7th out of 68 in my age group”.

A tremendous finish for Ian! Congratulations! Eton for Ian next week for a bit of draft-legal mayhem!

team battle between Mika Brown and Craig Boggon!  Mika led by 90s out of the pool over Craig. Craig then took 60s out of Mika’s lead on the first lap of a hilly bike leg, then another 45s on the second lap to lead Mika into T2 by 15s. All looked set for a battle royals in the run, but Mika’s legs deserted him on the uphill section of the run and he faded to give Craig a comfortable victory in the end.

This was not however the only battle – there was an outsider in the form of a horse box.  On the bike a horse box and 4×4 contrived to nearly knock both Craig and Mika off their bikes. A couple of Leeds Bradford Tri-ers also complained about theatrics of horse box drivers as well.

It was a happier ending with the cash prizes for Craig’s Gold and Mika’s Silver- £100 cash and £50 cash not coupons (nor last year’s prize of a year’s supply of tea!).

Jackpoters were splattered to the seven winds this weekend and all raced under very different conditions.

Lets start with Mallorca 70.3…rain was forecast but no one expected the Turner-like deluge which flooded the latter part of the bike course.

Anyway, back to the beginning. Over 4000 athletes waited in cold temperatures for the rolling swim start on Saturday morning whilst even the beach started to flood. Jenni Muston found a spectator to moonboot-watch whilst she was able to swim and have said moonboots handed back to her on exit from the swim to enable her to get to the transition area. The swim was warm…but was also full of jellyfish! Athletes defrosted in the Med whilst spectators watched on like freezing penguins.

After a great swim and five stings, Jen exited the water to find it was still thrashing down with rain, popped on the mootboots and walked the 800m to transition. After a wait in transition and lathered in anti-jellyfish-sting-cream, Jen hopped onto the bike with a chum to keep her company during the relentless downpour.

After much nattering and 40 miles into the bike, Jen and chum came across another chum who was more than chilly. It was quickly obvious he was starting to go down with hyperthermia. After getting him to the side of the road and emergency services called, said frozen chum was put into ambulance, transport for his bike sorted and Jen & Co were on their way again to the soggy finish.  That ended the race for Jen as she’s still can not run with the injured foot. She still got her medal, t-shirt and finish photo shot and thoroughly enjoyed the day 🙂

All a bit different from the last two years which have seen temperatures hitting 40-degrees on the run.

Back in a scorching blighty, where temperatures touched 27-degrees in Sunny Yorkshire (yep, rubbing it in), Tim Ashelford opened his 2016 racing-account with a 4th in AG at the English Championships in St Neots. “Strange mix of very cold swim and hot run”, said Tim.

Feeling at home, Jackpot’s Aussie contingent was racing the ELT Dragonslayer duathlon at the Lee Valley VeloPark (better known as Olympic Park).  Ryan Parry hit the race without tapering but still came a brilliant 6th overall.  The  race was held on the criterium race track which is very undulating and technical track.  Ryan even led from the gun until about five laps into the 15-lap bike.

And then over to Cagliari ITU World Cup sprint event where David Bishop smashed out a 9:34 swim and 16:25 run for 59:18 total and 38th position overall despite still recovering from a chronic injury. Heather Sellars (top) was also on-form for her first race of the year, putting in the day’s 10th best run in 18:04. An overall time of 01:06:01 gave Heather 15th place in the ladies race.  By all accounts the cycle leg on this course was a bit of a tester.

Hannah Drewit was flying the jackpot flag in Challenge Rimini (clear, 20-degrees but windy) and boy did she fly the flag!  First out of the water, Hannah led the race for the first hour before being overtaken at 25k on the bike, and then held second until 60k.  Despite a hiccup with a lost timning-chip, Hannah recorded 5:05 for her first middle distance race.  Impressive start.

Last, but certainly not least, Jack Hall took an overall win at the snappily-named Peterborough Monster Racing Monster-Mojito Triathlon 2016. In Jack’s own words;

“Sweet start to the season on a sweet day in Peterborough. I started a bit excited for this my first triathlon of the season and ended up drilling the 1500m swim and 40km bike. Not really worrying about the run as my mind-set for each stage was ‘Don’t worry about the pain its future Jack’s problem.’ When future Jack had reached the run he immediately regretted the decisions of past Jacks’. However, I managed to waddle around the 10km to take the win by over 5mins.”

Yet more silver to add to the podium cabinet from this weekend’s racing!  Katie Synge raced for the first time with Jackpot scoring a WIN at the Oldbury White Horse Sprint Triathlon – Katie was 1st lady over the line by 5 minutes, 7th overall (#girlpower) and had the FASTEST swim and the only athlete to go under 5 minutes (4:25.60 to be precise! How fast?!) over the 400m distance. Katie broke the course record finishing in 58:37.35.  What a race!

Team mate Max Hazell also podiumed at the same race finishing 20 seconds behind the winner and posting an outrageously fast run of 16:13 over the 5k distance – the fastest time in the race overall!

In sunnier and less snowy climes, David Bishop headed over to Madrid for the 2016 ETU Triathlon European Cup on Sunday. David finished 24th less than 5 minutes behind the 1st position, putting in a sub 18 minute swim over the 1500m distance, 1:05 on the 40k bike and 33 minutes on the 10k run. Ridiculously fast – top racing David 🙂

The weekend also saw the BUCS Sprint Triathlon Championships held at Calne in Wiltshire.  We have another podium!  Hannah Drewett took silver over the 750m pool swim (3rd fastest swim!), 20km bike (non drafting – Hannah had the fastest bike of the female race) and 5km swim.  Fantastic going Hannah!

Team mate Chris Perham also raced finishing in the top ten in 9th position just 1 minute behind the race leader. Chris had the 4th fastest swim and like Max, put in a 16 minute 5k.  Tremendous racing both!

No sign of Matt Hallam this weekend but we think he is due a weekend off!