Truly amazing! What a weekend with Gongs dropping left right and centre in every race at the weekend for Coalfields RT athletes at the Triathlon England National Team Relay Championships at Nottingham this weekend.
The only place we can start is at the beginning!
For the second year running now our Coalfields contingency were out in force in no fewer than six teams in an exciting weekend of racing! Beginning on Saturday morning we had a Coalfields Mixed Select team out in the shape of Mick Lavender, Matty Davison, Jenn Batey and Nat Batey making up our speedy quartet, proving their form of late to scoop up four silver medals for finishing in 2nd place in the Tri England "Race Team" category. All four athletes were joined by Garry Walker on the top step of the podium racing in the colours of Team ERDINGER Alkoholfrei.
Saturday afternoons racing saw the attention turning to the Triathlon England Women's Relay National Championship Race. This time out we had Kerry Gowland, Lisa Irving, Angela Campbell and Jenn Batey (racing for the second time in the day). What ever the mixed team could do, the Ladies could do just as well!!! Matching the silver medals won in the morning session, Jenn walking away with her second!
That was not the only success we had in that race! Each race was joined by open teams and as we had a non triathlon England member in a team of Elliot Gowland, Mick Morris, David Wallace and Mick Proud, our group of boys waltzed to overall victory with Elliot crossing the line and taking overall honours!
Biggest respect and victory of the day however went to our team of WAG's, Charlotte Walker, Kelly Philpott and Kelly Turnbull were chaperoned by Natalie Batey in her second outing of the day, to complete the race with extreme pride! What an inspiration those girls were in tough conditions.
Sunday turns its attention to our men's competition! In this race we also had a mixed open team in of Elliot Gowland, Mick Proud, Lisa Irving and Kerry Gowland. A team which was patched together on the day due to a few last min injuries. The guys all had a great performance to what was their second race of the weekend.
So on to the Men's Race! This turned into being a very tough day for Chris Philpott, Matty Fearn, Matt Turnbull and Garry Walker! Finding out that Garry's Erdinger mixed team on Saturday morning won a Tri England Gold Medal in the Race team Category, this meant that should our boys get anywhere near the podium! Then unfortunately they would not be able to collect a prize and their position would be rolled down to next team. The tough decision had to be made as to whether we substitute Garry or go with Plan A and race for pride!
We went with the latter!
We raced, we raced hard, we literally shed blood with Chris flying into T2, we sweated, lots! And think that may have been a tear in Garry's eye crossing the line knowing they had given all they had! A tanoy announcement for a representative of Coalfielda to go to the race director was to hammer the nail in the coffin of what had been feared!
Chris Philpott, Matt Fearn, Matt Turnbull and Garry Walker should have walked away with Gold Medals as Triathlon England Club champions had it not been for Garry's medal the day before! For that I'm sorry guys but we knew going into that race and the outcome was the best and worst we could ever have asked for! Chapeau
So that's
Mixed relay race team Silver
A team member gaining Mixed relay gold.
Women's club relay silver
Open race overall winners
Men's (unofficial) Champions
9 medals and 4 trophies!
As I said at the start, Amazing!!!