Off to World Championships

Orange has an incredible 21 athletes competing in this year’s Triathlon World Championship which will be held from September 12-16 at the Gold Coast.

The Championship will see 46 nations come together to compete with Orange locals qualifying in the Sprint Distance and Standard Distance races.

The Juniors Coach, Mel Ashton says, “It is very exciting, I think this is the largest group that Orange has had compete at an age group championship and it is wonderful to see from a coaching perspective, the growth of the sport in this area, particularly amongst the juniors.”

Mel explained that there are two levels to the competition and she is just excited to see these guys race.

“There are the professional athletes who will go the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, then there are these guys who race against other athletes in their age group.

“I am looking forward to these guys having an experience of racing in an international race and hopefully get inspired to continue and hopefully one day we will get one of these athletes on the Australian elite team and perhaps going to the Commonwealth or Olympic Games,” said Mel.

We then caught up with some of the athletes who will be competing in age groups ranging from 16 years up to 69 years.

Kate Thornton will be competing in the 45-49 years age group with her family backing her the whole way.

“I feel so excited and extremely proud to be representing Australia at the World Championships. I can’t wait to see all the hard training over the last three years pay off. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my wonderful family, training buddies and of course my awesome coach Dan Brenton from The Barnyard,” said Kate.

Amanda Livingston will be competing in the 25-29 years age group and this will be her first time competing at a major event.

“I am very excited but very nervous too. Most of my hours every day have been spent trying to prepare my mind mentally which is something that I have always struggled with, but also physically in terms of strength and endurance. I am just looking forward to enjoying the event, the atmosphere and putting myself out of my comfort zone,” said Amanda.

There will be six people competing in the 16-19 years age group and we caught up with three of them to see how they where looking forward to the event.

Rory Thornhill said, “I feel good and excited. It will be a good experience. For this event I have been training since Nationals finished, so a couple of terms now”.

Tom Tudor said, “I am very excited to represent my country. I have been doing this sport ever since I was a little kid. I am looking forward to the competition, there will be a lot of good athletes there”.

Jessie Dean said, “I am really excited. We have to do pretty high intensity training and then we try to train about 10 sessions a week. I really enjoy it though and training with these guys is pretty good. I think competing against the people you train with is really good, you get to compete in training as well in actual races which is really cool. I am looking forward to just representing my country and having the opportunity to be in the race”.

Orange have some very talented athletes and here’s the full list of the individuals who will be competing at this year’s Triathlon World Championships.
 

Sprint Distance – 750m swim/20km ride/5km run

16-19 yrs – Lauren Kerwick, Jessie Dean, Jack Bilton, Rory Thornhill, Tom Tudor and Connor Whiteley

25-29 yrs – Amanda Livingston and Tristan Harrison

40-44 yrs – Kim Dale

45-49 yrs – Kate Thornton and David Hunter

50-54 yrs – Phillip Tudor

55-59 yrs – Julie Middleton

65-69 yrs – Judy Tarleton and Sally Wallace

Standard (Olympic) Distance – 1500m swim/40km ride/10km run

20-24 yrs - Stephanie Harrison

25-29 yrs – Bridgette Evans

30-34 yrs – Katherine Sutton

45-49 yrs – David Searle

50-54 yrs – Danielle Syme

60-64 yrs – Cas Ingham
65-69 yrs – Sally Wallace


Caption 1: Judy Tarleton, Julie Middleton, Sally Wallace, Kate Thornton, Amanda Livingston, Kim Dale and Cas Ingham who are some of the competitors to compete at the Triathlon World Championship.


Caption 2: Rory Thornhill, Tom Tudor and Jessie Dean who are competing in the 16-19 years age group.