Report by Nick Buis:

The latest round of the Mazda National Ranking Series took place on Sunday. Strong winds battered the Worthing Triathlon into semi-submission and despite waiting till the last minute the swim was cancelled due to south westerly winds exceeding force five and gusting six.

I was gutted that the sea -swim had been cancelled after having spent a couple of training session down at calshot in similar conditions I was looking forward to it. Instead a 5km prom run became the substitute along Worthing sea front, which was great going out with the tailwind only to be blown backwards heading back on the return leg. I came in to T1 in 16:30 as part of the lead pack.

This was followed by a 43k undulating bike which, in the unforgiving wind against coming home, almost made me want to start the 10k prom run, that and the fact that as one 4 strong pack of drafters formed in front of me and a second 6 strong passed me I hoped that I might see a draft buster! Coming in to transition for T2 I had lost a number of places and so knew that I would have a lot of work to do in order to gain some back. This time the run was two laps and at least by now the rain had stopped and the prom was drying out, I took it fairly easy for the first 2k using the tail wind to help run down a couple of people before working hard into the wind and slowly picking off more runners.

I finished in 2:06:51 just over 4 minutes behind the winner Colin Dixon and 12th overall despite posting a 36:45 second 10km in the conditions and clawing back over 15 places.

I was really disappointed that the swim was cancelled but understand the decisions given the waves, however I wasn’t impressed by the amount of drafting as so many people entered the bike together with only the 5km run to break things up. I was gutted to hear at the end that no one was given any time penalties or DQ as the draft busters were at the scene of an accident ( one of the riders drafting came off at a tight roundabout, the rider I believe is ok mainly bumps & cuts). When speaking to the race ref he said that one rider came in after the bike and handed his number over and said that he wasn’t doing the run as he knows he would have been DQ’d for drafting, at least one of the drafters had a conscience albeit that there were no penalties given! .