Ollie Whistler and Sarah Fletcher win triseries Nowra Olympic Distance Triathlon

In what turned out to be a very close race Ollie Whistler just managed to hold out a very fast finishing David Mainwaring. After coming out of the water almost a minute down Whistler proceeded to put over four minutes on Mainwaring on the bike. Even a puncture (holted with Stans Notubes) which he managed to nurse back to T2 didn’t put a holt to his dominance on the bike.

Once out on the run course Ollie had to dig deep as David was on a mission to run him down. There was an obvious difference of pace out there and in the closing stages of the run Mainwaring was really pushing the limits to try and bridge the gap. It turned in to a sprint for the line with Whistler able to hold off Mainwaring for the win.

This was the first hit out for Ollie Whistler in a while. After taking a total break from training for three weeks over Xmas he managed to get in 1 1/2 weeks of training prior to Nowra. 2011 had some ups and downs with one of the highs being a win at the Yeppoon 70.3 ahead of a fast finishing Matty White.

At 24 Ollie is still very young and with two major wins already under his belt he is looking at a very good future in the sport. In 2010 Ollie won the Canberra Half Ironman and 2011 saw him take out the Yeppoon 70.3. Ollie also has two top ten finishes at Antwerp in the Belguim 70.3 and a 5th at the European 70.3 championship.

David Mainwaring looked like a man on a mission on Sunday. his 31:33 10kms was was fast considering the number of turns and climbs in the run. He won the 2010 Maitland triathlon and last year raced some in 2011 raced 5 ITU cup triathlons. His best finish was a solid 10th at the Roatan ITU Triathlon Pan American Cup.

After the race Whistler spoke about his new resolve to be 110% focused on the sport in 2012. He is going to take a slightly selfish approach to achieving his goals and making sure that there is nothing in the way of his dreams. To be great in any sport there almost always needs to be a resolve to to be totally focused. This is not always the case but it helps. Ask any competitive age grouper what they would do if they had their time over. Almost all would say that if they were young again they would give it a real crack.

Sarah Fletcher was dominant and never looked like being headed. She out swam the field and ran 1:20 faster than Stephanie Graves to take the women’s race by almost four minutes.

In the sprint triathlon Mick Maroney should the young guns how to race. Whilst young Cameron Roberts showed that he has a big future in the sport and was the first to break the tape Mick Maroney had started 2-3 waves back and had charged through the field to put in a time 1:49 quicker to take the overall honours.

The sport benefits from having one of the greats like Maroney turn up and race regularly.

Once again Emo and the crew at Elite Energy put on a fantastic day of triathlon for the athletes of NSW. The triseries has been a great hit. Next in the series is the hugely popular Jervis Bay Multisport festival in Huskisson where around 4000 athletes will take part in the weekend of racing.

Watching some of the enticer triathlon after the sprint race with Ollie we saw this young kid running like a greyhound. He was in the 12-13 age group and ran the 2kms in 7:13. It looked impressive! It will be great to see this kid still around in the sport in 5 or 6 years with the same enthusiasm. Let’s hope that he is kept in check and enjoys his youth thoroughly so that he still has the same hunger for the sport.

Results by race then age group