RIYADH, 7 May 2004 — Rob Ervin, the Riyadh Triathletes Chairman, welcomed 67 athletes to the season opening Biathlon, the largest opening day turn out in over 3 years.
In the A Division, a strong swim and the fastest run took Alex Carinan to 1st. Biathlon specialist and last year's winner Jesper Nielsen took 2nd by just 3 seconds from Sean McLean who overcame a poor swim to take 3rd, followed closely by the consistent Larry Lazzo in 4th. John Stanton dominated the swim, and put in a solid run for 5th holding off the fast charging Neville Koen in 6th.
Twelve seconds was all that separated the next three places — Craig Manning taking 7th, Dave Hall, despite a disappointing swim ran hard to grab 8th from Matt Hughs with Mitch Younge taking a well earned 10th.
In the B Division, K. Malone was the runaway leader and only 3 seconds shy of breaking into the overall top 10. N. Desanghere swam well to take 2nd from F. Gocian. With some new names added to the mix the B Division is looking very competitive this year. M. Cowan took 4th, 25 seconds then separated the next three with J. Bowtell 5th, C. Gordon 6th and E. Panaino in 7th. Rounding out the top 10 were K. Allen G. Ingram and J. Walker.
In the junior category Nicholas Ryan won by an impressive 2 minutes over his nearest challenger.
Special mention to this week’s 'Lantern Rouge', J.Munday who toughed it out all the way to the finish. An outstanding opening weekend has set the scene for what should be a great season.
