Monday, June 8, 2020

Early days of Triathlon






Early days of Triathlon

Another one of those ‘What are the odds’ moments occurred yesterday when we were checking the desk diary that actually has nothing much in these days because we don’t have any dates to look forward to or friends to meet for sport or theatre left. Everything has been transferred into the 2021 diary list.

Steve had been upstairs going through cupboards and shelves looking for my portable CD player for me. He found it in the last room he searched and in the only cupboard left to look in. Finding that was a good thing because I am always on the move from room to room, up and down the stairs, so it’s no good at all for me to have something playing in one spot. Let us not forget that I am a nightmare. 

 James Clarke riding back towards transition in Windsor

Under his arm when he returned, he was holding a large menu from the restaurant of famous French chef Paul Bocuse (that is another story), inside that was an equally huge Kodasnap folder. Both had been used to make sure that some treasured old photos did not get bent and cracked.

Actually it held a gift souvenir collection that had been carefully gathered into a presentation form by somebody that Steve had coached for a period of time. The collage was a set of club photos from 1991 Windsor Triathlon. Steve and I are both in the mix and also James Clarke who was the first person that Steve coached and coached well as is shown in that he quickly started to get podium places at races.


The coincidence comes in with the fact that at the end of this week, June 14th would have been the 30th anniversary presentation of the Human Race Events big summer show piece, Windsor Triathlon. There had been big plans made to mark the occasion with triathlon legends of the race invited to take part. Steve and I were both invited for the event since we were among a number of people who had raced the event nearly every year since it started when John Lunt was race director as he was for many of those thirty years, master mind of race events in this country and now internationally.


The Windsor Triathlon has evolved over the years with gradual changes being made to the course, the most spectacular being the change that now takes the run course into the castle grounds and spectators can see runners moving up and down The Long Walk.

 This was me at 50 

In 1991 I was new to triathlon although Steve had completed one Olympic distance race in August of the previous year, when he raced at Emberton Park. His star athlete James Clarke had raced a half dozen times by then.

Our 1990 diary on August 31st has penciled in it that Steve and James did a 1 mile sea swim and under that, it states that Daf practiced front crawl. I was a breast stroke swimmer and it took me until Christmas to work up to a mile of front crawl. 

 How skimpy?

So in 1991 with the Damp Dash pool swim run as the first event, we all competed in:
Ringwood Triathlon April 28th with a pool swim.
Swindon Triathlon May 26th which was my first open water swim, in a triathlon.
Windsor was on June 23rd with a mile swim in the River Thames!
Swindon and Windsor were both Olympic distance races .

Windsor results:
James Clarke finish time 2.00.55.
Swim 23.31
Bike 1.00.32
Run 36.52  

Steve Belt finish time 2.27.44
Swim 26.31
Bike 1.13.12
Run 47.59.

Daphne Belt finish time 2.43.31
Swim 38.34
Bike 1.16.33
Run 48.24

That was a long time ago and these photos were a priceless find.



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