Triathalon Triumph
Varsity Triathalon Eversholt
The Oxford women powered to victory in the Varsity triathlon event on Sunday. Canadian rowing Olympian Buffy Williams won the women’s individual gold at the varsity match in Eversholt, Buckinghamshire on Sunday 15th May. The Oxford women’s team, made up of Williams, Rachel Hughes and Nerys Hughes finished 17 minutes clear of the Cambridge team, scoring the first victory for Oxford in the three years since triathlon varsity matches began.
The chilly morning combined with a 400m open air swim meant a testing start. The organisers sought to start everyone off for the swim at closely spaced intervals, no doubt with the best of intentions. However, with the slower swimmers off first, things started going wrong when the faster swimmers began to catch up and had to battle through waves created by earlier starters in the narrow swim lanes. Oxford’s Luke Walton emerged from the water with the fastest time at 5:57.
The 20 km bike leg proved less demanding. The fastest man home was Cambridge’s Steven Stuart, who stormed through the course at a speed of 43 km/h. Stuart punctured at the Varsity 25 mile Time Trial the weekend before and had decided to compete in the triathlon at the last minute to salvage something of his season.
Despite the best efforts of Oxford’s Luke Walton, Geoff Roberts and Thom Ringer to make up time on the 5km run Stuart held on to his advantage from the bike leg to take the individual title. Cambridge won the men’s team competition with a margin of nearly 8 minutes over Oxford. Nevertheless, this had been a fine day for the Oxford men, considering that Walton had been unable to run because of injury since Cross Country Varsity.
19th May 2005