Sam Douglas and Elly Franks Open Winners at Noosa Triathlon

Sam Douglas used his power on the bike to put himself in to a winning position on Sunday to take out the open division of the Noosa Triathlon. Sam was racing his first Olympic distance race of the season and his main goal was to get in to a position to obtain a pro license. Two weeks ago in Forster he won the opening round of the NSW pro tour after edging out his good mate Michael Murphy. In the women’s open category Ely Franks also used her strength on the bike to give herself enough of a margin to hold out a faster finishing Kym Jaenke who ran the 10kms two minutes faster than Franks.

Sam Douglas is a great young up and coming triathlete who is balancing university, training and part time work.”The plan was to gain my professional license from this race and see what kind of times I could do alone (non-drafting that is). I felt a little slow in the swim but soon found rhythm and some feet which pulled me through, the bike was quick and where I made my move”. Jet Cycles had supplied Sam with a Brand new Specialized Shiv for the race and HED provided a set of of HED JET wheels. “When I came off the bike I
had around a two minute lead. Again it took me a while to find the legs for the run. I am now applying for my Professional license and plan to race the national series races. Sam’s next race is Nepean in two weeks. “Finally a big thankyou to my coach Mark Newton and the guys who I train with. Also Trizone for always helping out publishing race reports for those of us trying to break in to the top of the sport.

Pic of the new Shiv. With Crowie getting on to one recently there is a lot of interest in these bikes.

Elly Franks was just too strong on the bike for the rest of the field. Her 1:05 put her in a great position for the run and all she had to do was defend and make sure she finished strongly. It was great to see Christelle Van Niekerk has dusted off her triathlon bike and madea  solid comeback after choosing to not race triathlons last year. Van Niekerk instead raced a 700km mountain bike endurance race in South Africa with her brother. This resulted in a couple of broken ribs and some injury to her pride. Maybe triathlon is a safer sport afterall. Laura Siddall made a grand entrance to open category racing with a solid 4th place. Siddall recently won the world title for her age group at Beijing over the sprint distance and has recently been nominated for the British Female Age Group Athlete of the Year.