Active Sussex Sports Awards
Sussex County Cricket Club Grounds, in The Long Room 25.11.21
Active Sussex Sports Personality of the Year 2021
Paralympian Cyclist Katie-George Dunlevy
It was a really nice surprise when I was notified that I had been nominated for the Active Sussex Sport awards. I was sent an invitation to attend the awards ceremony then a while later, there was an update to say that I had been selected as a finalist in the Sports Person of the Year category, one of three nominees in that category:
Georgia Adams, who is a very successful well-known Cricketer, the astonishing Paralympian Katie-George Dunlevy, who had been supplied with a table to display her THREE Medals from the recent Tokyo Paralympics, two gold and a silver. She was being photographed and I to managed to squeeze in afterwards to get a photo taken with her too. She charmingly handed me one of the medals to pose with! Such a sweet girl and happy to chatter for a while with us both and even told us about her disability that is that she has very restricted vision. Though she could see us to talk to us, it was like tunnel vision as I understood it. Such a determined talented young woman.
The Active Sussex Awards evening was a very happy occasion, there were lots of smiling faces and a surprising amount of people came and made themselves known to me and congratulated me on all of my achievements. As one of the finalists in my category, neither Steve nor I had expected anything more from the evening for me, and having seen and spoken to Katie it was definitely, no-contest. We met both of her parents, who were nice friendly people and we talked with them for quite a while. We also had a very nice talk with Sadie Mason MBE who still plays the basket ball game that she is famed for and is now Chief Executive of Active Sussex.
I was really thrilled that I had made it as far as being a finalist. I have no idea who nominated me in the first place, but I supposed that it was due to having won my age group in Ironman 70.3 Venice-Jesolo and had qualified for the Worlds Championships to be held In St. George, Utah in October 2022. I had been the oldest person overall in the Venice-Jesolo race and the oldest woman by a long way; at least two age groups. I believe that would make it a record for the event and maybe for European 70.3 Ironman events. That last point has not been looked into though.
A week before we left to race in Italy, our race warm up had been the English Aquathlon Championships in Worthing not far from our home.
I believe my age in that event may also be a record because at the presentations, the BTF representative who was presenting the medals told me that I could use the medal that had been presented to me for the photographs but that it was not correct and that I would be sent the right one later. I recall years ago that I was told that I had opened a new age group at the sprint Championships, when I think I might have been in the 70-75 group at the time. So it is altogether possible that and 82 year-old was not medal catered for at the Aquathlon event this year. My husband/coach placed second in his age group at the Aquathlon. 70-74. He was also second in Venice-Jesolo in 70-74 AG men’s and would have had a much better time recorded if it were not for this strange story.
There was a rolling start for the swim, where four or five athletes were released into the sea at a time, a few second apart. Stephen had told me to start earlier in the long trail of athletes and he would start later and more than likely catch me up before the end of the 1900 metre sea swim. By the time I got back to transition, which was a very long jog in bare feet from the beach and taken my wetsuit off and put on my cycle shoes. Steve was also somewhere in transition. He passed me on the bike course and gradually pulled away from my position and I did not see him again until there was a point where the course had a there and back section along one side of a canal and then back down the other side where I was able to shout and wave at him even though he was a long way ahead of me in fact. That is why I was astonished to see him in transition when I got back in because he was a long way ahead, at least 20 minutes in front of me from the bike alone. Adding the swim time difference, he would have been about 40 minutes ahead of me I would have thought.
It turned out that another athlete had mistakenly racked his bike on Steve’s number on the racking. Due to Covid restrictions, there were no changing tents and so all athletes had to place their bike and run kit in bags bedside their bikes. The other athlete whose bike was now where Steve’s bike should be parked had caused a mess. He had not only rifled through Stephen’s bags but had it appeared taken Steve’s fancy new trainers too! Outrageous behaviour. One presumes that they took a similar size and poor Steve had to find an official to try help sort it out. She went and found the other man’s bag at the place where he should have parked his bike. She came back with a bag and told Steve that at that time his only option was to put on the other guy’s trainers which were by the way, a tatty pair of racing flats with no support unlike to pair he had stolen of Stephen’s.
Meanwhile I had changed into my nice new pair of trainers and Steve was still there complaining to all the officials who did no more than advise him that all he could do was use those wrong shoes. That is how come, we were able to finish that race together and have our best ever finish line photo that has both of us in the really super shot .
After the race, even though it was still raining torrents, that started during the thunderstorm on our last lap of the run. We complained to every official we could find, who all said that the theft of his new trainers would be reported, in fact it was ignored and the man was not disqualified for unsporting behaviour which should have happened. It was annoying but apart from the stolen shoe saga it was a most enjoyable and highly successful race for me. The big plus being that both of us had qualified for the World Championships in Utah and there had been an amazing reception at the awards ceremony. We heard nothing more about the missing trainers.
Great race otherwise.
