Nearly 700 athletes take part in the 7th Batemans Bay Triathlon Festival.
This weekend Batemans Bay hosted the tenth race of the NSW Tri Series for Triathletes. The Sunday event was the seventh year Shoalhaven based Elite Energy (the organising company) had brought the annual events to the beachside town. Nearly 700 athletes took part in what has become a favourite place to race for triathletes. The Batemans Bay leg of this 12 stop tour saw triathletes of all ages and abilities compete across 5 different distances.
CEO of Elite Energy Mark Emerton said “We absolutely love coming down to Batemans Bay, just a short drive from our hometown of Nowra it really is one of the jewels of the South Coast. “The testing terrain and beautiful scenery really do make this location unique, there aren’t many races in the world that can boast an event setting like this”.
In the longest of the five contested distances was the Ultimate distance, a 1.9km swim, 90km bike ride and 21.1km run. With storms overnight participants welcomed near perfect racing conditions on what is considered one of the more challenging courses in the series with a swim at Corrigans Beach, a bike ride that takes on the rolling hills out to Broulee and a scenic run that takes in views of the Clyde River.
In the Men’s race Charles Legget took out the honours in a time of 4.29.06. Photo by: Seb Gallery
Legget of Redfern led out of the swim chased by Tim Frankcombe (Coogee) onto the bike, with Rod Hutchinson (Northbridge) 30 seconds in arrears. After placing third at Ultimate Forster last year Legget has worked hard to make his way to the top of the podium stamping his authority in Batemans Bay with a solid 88min run off a very testing bike leg. In the end it came down to the run where James Viles(location) and Wayne Corlis (Gordon, ACT) made use of strong run legs coming through the field to take the minor placings in 4.34.47 and 4.39.31 respectively.
In the Women’s Ultimate Distance race it was Kristy Hallet of South Melbourne VIC that dominated with a 36secs lead out of the water, Hallet held the lead on the bike before taking a further 7mins out of Natalie Wood of Torrens ACT on the run taking the win in a time of 5.03.50 an astounding 10mins and 48secs ahead of Wood(5.14.38) and Angela Ballerini of Duffy, ACT(5.20.58) .
In the Women’s Ultimate Distance race it was Kristy Hallet in a time of 5.03.50
Photo by: Seb Gallery
Sunday’s event was also made possible by droves of volunteers who gave up their time to support a great community event and to raise funds for their local community groups and charities. Elite Energy donates to these community groups in lieu of their time. It is expected that in excess of $4000 will be donated to community groups and charities who supplied 50 volunteers who manned drink stations, athlete safety and other various roles across the event. “The Batemans Bay Triathlon festival is only made possible by the hard work of our fantastic volunteers from community groups such as Nature Coast Dragon Boat Club, the Bay Salvation Army, Batemans Bay Lions Club, Clyde View Day Club and Batemans Bay BMX, said Jody McClaren the Volunteer manager at Elite Energy.
