Sun Shines on Britain's Olympic Medal Hopefuls

Wednesday, 1st September 2004

Britain's Olympic triathletes, Andrew Johns and Julie Dibens showed why they are real medal prospects in Athens, each taking victory in the mens and womens elite races at the Royal Windsor Triathlon today.

The event in it's 14th running saw over 2250 athletes, professional and amateur, compete in both Olympic distance (1500m swim/40K Bike/10K run) and sprint distance races (750m/30K/5K). The highlight being the men's and women's professional races which went off last on the brilliantly sunny day in front of a crowd of more than ten thousand.

The women's race saw 20 of the UK's and world's top triathletes go head to head over the picturesque Berkshire course. However, from the sound of the starting horn the race script was written as Julie Dibens outclassed the international field.

First out of the swim, Dibens lead the women's event from start to finish with only Britain's multiple Junior World Champion, Anneliese Heard, providing her company on the bike section. Off the bike and onto the run, Dibens recorded the second fastest run time of the day to finish more than 2 minutes ahead of her nearest competition, Catriona Morrison (GB), in 2h04m33s.  Rounding out the top three was Helen Lawrence (GB) in a time of 2:06:44 with the top international triathlete on the day being Denmark's Lisbeth Kristensen finishing in sixth position with a time of 2h11m12s.

The 40 strong elite men's race however followed a much more dramatic story line. Predictably, Britain's uber swimmers Stuart Hayes and Harry Wiltshire lead the swim, exiting the water first and second with 5-time World Champion Spencer Smith hot on their heels, followed closely by Olympians Andrew Johns and Tim Don, and 2002 Windsor Triathlon winner Richard Allen.

Out on to the hilly 40K race favourite Spencer Smith was dropped from the lead group. Within minutes he was joined from behind by ex-continental cyclist Stephen Bayliss who recorded the second fastest bike split of the day, leading Spencer into transition in sixth position just behind the first group.

In transition, the leaders frantically pulled their running shoes on, exiting transition on mass. Out on the run however, it quickly became a two-man race with Andrew Johns and Richard Allen pulling away from the rest, battling each other over the first two of the three laps. Near the end of the penultimate lap Johns pulled away from Allen to claim victory by five seconds in a time of a 1h52m27s. Coming in third was Johns fellow Athens Olympic team member Tim Don in 1h53m22s, followed by Stuart Hayes in fourth and a resurgent Spencer Smith in fifth.

On his victory and preparations for Athens, Andrew Johns commented: "Todays victory felt great, I have been working very hard on my biking in preparation for the hilly Athens course and it showed today. I felt really good and it was great to win in front of the Windsor crowd. Windsor is always one of the highlights of my race calendar, its got such an amazing atmosphere and is so well organised, its definitely one of my favourites."

On the day as a whole Race Director John Lunt said: "This was the best Windsor Triathlon in all of its 14 years, it was the largest Windsor ever, the racing was first rate, spectators fantastic and the weather perfect."

Elite Women

Elite Men