PTO Dorney Lake Triathlon: Prize-Purse goes into Barclay’s account
Lucy Charles-Barclay took the lion’s share of the prize pot of £12,000 following her triumphant win this Sunday in the women’s section of PTO sponsored Dorney Lake Long-Distance Triathlon.
Charles-Barclay has had a busy race schedule of late with Challenge Miami, SLT Arena Games, Olympic Swimming Trials and only last week-end participating in AJ Bell World Triathlon Championship Series in Leeds and finishing in a remarkable 5th place.
Charles-Barclay and Olympian Lucy Hall both showed their killer swims in the 1.8km swimming leg smashing the women’s field with swim times of 00:23:08 and 00:23:10 respectively even ahead of the fastest male swimmer by over 1minute 30 seconds. Both Charles-Barclay and Hall headed out of T1 together and there was little to choose between them with Hall just edging ahead coming into T2. Behind them both Nikki Bartlett and Kimberly Morrisson worked extremely hard on the 60km bike section to whittle the lead time down from over 4 minutes to a little over 2 minutes.
Onto the 15km run and it was Charles-Barclay who had the running legs over Hall as she showed daylight between the two of them. Behind them Nikki Barlett had not given up the chase and was slowing hauling Lucy Hall back. At the finishing line it was Charles-Barclay who crossed first in a time of 02:41:20 followed by Lucy Hall in second in 02:43:13 with the ever-improving Nikki Bartlett taking third spot in 02:44:14.
So, what next for Charles Barclay – well the girl does not rest on her laurels and it’s the Outlaw Half Nottingham on 20th June and the Outlaw Half Holkham on 4 July, another race recently supported by the PTO.
The men’s race was pre-viewed as a much more open event with the likes of bike-beast Joe Skipper and Tom Bishop fresh from his Leeds attempt for an Olympic spot to James Teagle and Leon Chevalier who both impressed at Challenge Gran Canaria coming 8th and 11th respectively in a field full of top Pro’s like Jan Frodeno, and Patrick Lange.
All four of the named athletes finished in the top five but the top spot was reserved for ERDINGER Alkoholfrei athlete Tom Davis who took the win in a victorious time of 02:31:21. Davis hails initially from the Loughborough Triathlon Performance Centre and raced in the shorter distance races on the domestic and European circuit but found that longer distance suited him more and as part of Team Incus Enabled athletes, turned his full attention to 70:30 races in 2018 with pleasing results. In his first PRO season in 2019 he won the Windsor and Azores 70:30 and was 3rd at Challenge Salou.
The race itself was a fairly even affair for the top 12 in the swim leg in terms of time with the exception of Joe Skipper and James Teagle who trailed some two minutes behind the leaders as they came out of the swim and into T1. Out onto the bike leg and it was Tom Davis and Luke Pollard who dropped the watt bombs and showed clear daylight of some two minutes between them and the chasing rivals as both powered their way through the bike route into T2.
Out onto the run and Davis set off at a blistering pace which Pollard could not hold. The chasing run group were in no mood to call it a day and were pushing themselves to their limits to catch the front runners of Davis and Pollard. As the run progressed both Chevalier and Teagle seeing sight of Pollard, who was suffering from the heat, successfully chased him down but Davis was to far ahead to make any further inroad and so it was Davis who took Gold with, Chevalier taking Silver and Teagle, Bronze.
