Martin’s experience trumps Phoebe’s will in Riyadh Triathletes 3rd biathlon

Last Friday Riyadh triathletes met in Ranco Village Compound for the third biathlon of the season. With a distance of 500m swimming and 3km running the fastest swimmers had their chance to dominate the event, Phoebe Lloyd-Evans and Marcus Hills were names to follow.
Still under fair weather conditions, it seems that this year the summer is taking a while to come over, the event gathered 60 participants besides family members and friends supporting the athletes along with sponsors Carrefour, Power Horse, 2XU, Sport in Life, Nestle Pure Life, Wolfi’s Bike Shop, Saab and Riyadh Palace Hotel, always providing excellent support in the season.
The race started with three swimming heats, many good performances were seen in the three of them with quite a few athletes doing personal best of this year. Remarkable, as always, was the junior triathlete Phoebe Lloyd-Evans, who with an impressive swim in the 500m proved again there is no rival for her in the swimming pool. She was leading the race to the transition and running track while the rest of competitors were still in the water. Junior Marcus Hills and the veteran Martin Ball both with excellent swimming times as well, composed a group out of the water chasing the head and closely followed by Gary Munsey just few seconds slower and Petr Pospisil forcing the pace not to get cut with the head of the race.
With a short transition, athletes started the two running laps, meanwhile, Lloyd-Evans was putting all her focus and strengths to keep the lead of the race, despite Ball’s pressure as he was shortening the gap between 1st and 2nd position in every minute. It was not up to the second running lap when Martin managed to gain the head of the race and claiming thus his third biathlon win of the season. Phoebe’s class led her to maintain herself in second position while completing a podium below 20’, showing his quality in both disciplines, was Petr Pospisil. Excellent performance as well for Cameron Ball finishing 4th overall closely followed by Gary Munsey just 5” behind. Marcus Hills had to abandon the race due to physical problems.
Category B showed a great turnout starting the race. Helen Lane, fastest swimmer and runner of her category, reencounter herself with victory and managing also to be within the Top 20 of male category. She was accompanied by Jana Jaruskova in the second box of the podium and Nikoll Long as third.
Results:
Overall: 1st Martin Ball (00:19:07), 2nd Phoebe Evans (00:19:29), 3rd Petr Pospisil (00:19:43), 4th Cameron Ball (00:20:27), 5th Gary Munsey (00:20:32), 6th Antonio Rodriguez Castellanos (00:20:42), 7th Brett Girven (00:20:53), 8th Gerd Mutze (00:22:13), 9th Gary Johnson (00:22:36), 10th Alistair McDermott (00:22:43)
Category B: 1st Helen Lane (00:24:30), 2nd Jana Jaruskova (00:26:45), 3rd Nikoll Long (00:28:50), 4th Veronica Plunkett (00:29:45), 5th Clare Aitken (00:30:30)