Aaron Royle and Ashleigh Gentle win $76,500 2014 Atmosphere Nepean Triathlon

Aaron Royle and Ashleigh Gentle took out the 2014 titles at the Atmosphere Nepean Triathlon. Royle didn’t have it all his way but was the genuine favourite for race day. Josh Amberger lead out of the swim and did a bulk of the pace setting out on the bike. Royle took a couple of turns but said he was working overtime to keep up with Amberger.

The 7m draft zone at Nepean does not play in to the hands of the strong cyclists like Amberger and Sam Appleton. But these are the rules. We suspect that 2015 will most likely see a 12m rule in place. Definitely for the pros but with the new bike course TA doesn’t see a problem with implementing this for the age groupers as well with some adjusted wave starts.

A chase pack of seven guys formed and under the very watchful eye of a senior TA official they all kept their 7m in check. And why wouldn’t you. Who is going to complain about sitting at 7m? No one ever.

Ryan Bailie, Cameron Good, Jesse Featonby, Peter Kerr, Nicholas Kastelein, Sam Appleton and Jacob Birtwhistle organised themselves in to a pace line but could not make inroads to Amberger and Royle. The two leaders had a 1min lead at the 15km mark and 1:30 by the time they hit T2.

In the women’s race Ashleigh Gentle exited the swim on the heels of Gillian Backhouse and took no time to take control of the race once out on to the bike. Gentle’s bike leg was just too strong for the rest of the field with her time around 1min faster than the next women.

On the run and Emma Jackson had to work for her second place after losing time to Gillian Backhouse on the bike. It wasn’t until the start of the second lap that the Commonwealth Games Bronze medalist reeled Gillian in and moved ahead.

It was good to see Lisa Marangon backing up from her third place at Port Macquarie 70.3 last weekend and is smack bang in the middle of Ironman Western Australia preparation. She knew she was going to be racing the quick ITU girls but loves racing at Nepean and wanted to enjoy a hitout.

The Handicap Race between the men and women pros was once again taken out by the fairer sex. We may see a reversal next year as the handicap comes down (it is based on the previous five years and the last two years have seen speedier women racing). Aaron Royle started the run with a 5min deficit to Ashleigh Gentle. By the time he came around to start the second of two run laps Royle had taken 2:20 off the lead. In the end he ran out of road and thought better of pushing things too hard with the bigger prize of Noosa in one weeks time.