Yesterday
whilst bustling around the house keeping some sort of order in a household that
is dominated by our sport and the need to get favourite bike kit through the
wash process and back on our backs for the next ride, my mobile phone rang.
After the usual speed of light headless chicken search for the blinkin’ thing,
I did manage to get hold of it before it told me that I had another missed
call. It was a man from Sussex Radio. The guy who rang seemed not to have a
clue about triathlon and had it seems dug my name out of their files of people
locally who do know what they are talking about.
Triathlon World Championships, Edmonton, Canada 2014
My last interview with them was last summer just
before going to the Triathlon World Championships in Chicago
The researcher opened the chat by saying that he
understood that there would be two young chaps from Yorkshire
competing in the Olympic Games Triathlon and did I know anything about that? So,
I was just being used to give them a base for the event that was on this
afternoon.
I explained first, that one of the great things about
Tri was that it was age grouped all the way through and so one only competes
against other athletes of the same age and that was hugely appealing, almost
inviting. I went on to say that another great thing about it as far as I was
concerned, was that you very often could do the same race, on the same day, as
the huge stars of the sport like the Brownlee’s or Jodie Simpson or any of the
rest of our top elite athletes.
He then checked on how long I had been competing in
triathlon. I wondered if he was just winding me up because I was sure they had
all my info in their files: Well if he was turning the wind-up key, then I
fully fell for it. I dropped the modesty and told him that I had competed in all
sorts of wonderful countries across the world, Japan ,
USA , Canada , Denmark ,
Sweden , France, Hungary, and Australia
When the call came this morning from the radio
station, they had got the age group thing straight and had invited a child of 10
on to contrast with my 77 years to show that it was a sport that welcomed all
ages and the interview was conducted going back and forth from me to the 10
year old Tom, who was in his second season and who was utterly charming and
spoke up for himself very well. They asked me the old sage things and asked Tom
what he found so enjoyable. I had to smile when he was asked what he was best
at and he said it was running and that he wasn’t so good on the bike because he
hadn’t got stamina in his legs yet. As a parting shot to me they asked me what
advice I would give to Tom and I replied that he would see the biggest
improvement in his results if he worked very hard on his bike.
Children's Scootathon at Dorney Lake Eton
I posted on Facebook today that I had been on the radio and
a friend of mine, James Hodge who had heard the programme made this complaint: I
was listening and to my surprise you came over the airwaves. I was a little
disappointed you didn't tell him how many Ironman races you had done. I also
think he should have given you your correct title of World Champion Triathlete Daphne Belt but
apart from that great interview x
So just to put thing right James, its 18 Ironman
races, plus quite a lot of 70.3 events.
Perish the thought that it is getting closer to the
time when I take up paddling at the waters edge, half a mile to the post box on
a mobility scooter, hobbling to the front door. I intend to put that off as long as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment