Sitting In With Chris Lieto

Photo: Nils Nilsen Pro triathlete Chris Lieto, who turns 40 in a couple weeks, talks about his form leading up to his first race of the 2012 season, Panama 70.3 (where he’s also spearheading a More Than Sport project to give back to the local community), his first crack at the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon, and how his Kona approach will be different this year. Triathlete.com: So, you’re gearing up for the first race of the season, Panama 70.3 [on February 12]. Chris Lieto: Yeah it’s going to be the kick-off for the year. It seems like the season starts earlier and earlier every year—I think this is the earliest it’s ever been.  It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes. I think the fitness is going to be there but I’m trying to also keep an eye out for the whole year and not go crazy getting ready for one race in February. Triathlete.com: How’s the training been going? Lieto: It’s actually been going really good. I turn 40 in a couple weeks so I think I’m the oldest one on the circuit as far as I know—there may be a few others. But with 40 coming up this is actually the best I’ve felt at this time of year, so I’m pretty happy with everything. Triathlete.com: Is there a certain focus in your training right now—an aspect that you’re spending more time on? Lieto: There’s always change to how you train and how you race each year. I have been racing for many years, and you always have to approach it differently—you can’t just do the same thing year after year. As I did last year, I’m focusing a lot on core strength, and this year I’ve increased that even more as well as stability stuff. I’ve been doing a little bit less overall training and hitting the key sessions and making sure I’ve been maximizing those sessions and dropping a little bit of the fluff sessions. I feel like my fitness is even better doing less and I’m bouncing back better from workouts. Triathlete.com: Will Kona be your main focus this year? Lieto: Hawaii is a unique race. For the last five years I’ve made it the biggest focus of the year and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it’s a frustrating day because all your eggs are in one basket. This [past Kona] was a little frustrating—getting heat exhaustion and other stuff about the way it unfolded. Right after that race I was frustrated and not sure what I wanted to do, but as I’ve gotten into my training and looked at my year and the goals that I’ve set for myself and my career, I still want to focus on Hawaii. That doesn’t mean, though, that’s the only race I’m going to focus on. I’m going to also focus on 70.3s; I do well at those, it’s kind of my strength. Ironmans take a lot out of you. It takes a lot of focus to get those things done. But I will definitely go and try to crack out a win in Hawaii. I’m going to give it my all but I’m not going to put as much pressure or mental focus on it. When the day comes and I’m at the start line in Hawaii I’m still going to give it as much effort as I can to try and go for the win; I’m not going to do anything different. Triathlete.com: Are you going to be racing Abu Dhabi this year? Lieto: Yeah, I’m finalizing everything with that and it looks like it’s going to be the first time I’m going to be doing that race. I’m looking forward to it; I think it’s going to be fun and it’s going to be a good race. One of the reasons I didn’t do the race earlier is because I wanted to see how it was going to unfold, what it was going to look like. I just wanted to see how it would play out. It seems like the first two years it was a really good race. It’s a unique format and structure—there are a lot of good athletes going. Everyone that I’ve talked to absolutely loves it—it’s a first-class race and a unique experience. The distance suits me but it still takes a lot of focus and training to get fit for that long of a bike ride. Even though the run is shorter is still takes a lot out of you. I think patience on the bike ride is important, and speed is important—you’re running a 20K so you have be in half-ironman shape and still have some Ironman fitness in you to be able to tackle that type of structure and distance. PHOTOS: 2011 Abu Dhabi International Triathlon Triathlete.com: At last year’s Abu Dhabi, the heat cracked a lot of people, so how will you approach the race knowing that the heat will likely be a factor? Lieto: The heat there is a little different—it’s drier [than the Kona heat]. I seem to do a little better in drier heat than humid heat. Training here [in Hawaii] helps—it’s not quite as hot as it is in October but I think I’ll still be getting in a lot of heat training. I’ve been out in the middle of the day doing some runs and have gotten used to it so that helps. The longer I’m out here the easier it gets. Triathlete.com: Tell me about your plans for Panama after you race. Lieto: One of my focuses this year is to continue to race the best I can and continue to win as many events as I can but when it’s all said and done if I do win races it’s gonna be great and if I don’t there’s a reason for me to do these races—and that is to give back to the community. In Panama [Lieto’s charitable organization More Than Sport] aligned with Homes of Hope, an organization that’s based out of Panama and Baja, Mexico. You build homes, which cost about $6,000 a home, and we can build a home in three days. I thought it would be a great opportunity to rally some athletes that are racing certain races like this one and challenge them to stay and give back to the community. Right now there’s a group of 20-plus—we’re still signing people up and there’s still time to get involved—and the day after the race we’re going to the Darien Gap, which is four hours away [from the race site], and the Panamanian Guard is behind what we’re doing and we’re using their vehicles and helicopters to get to this remote village that got hit by floods last year and lost 30-40 homes. We’re going to go into that community and build homes ourselves.  If people are going to the race and want to stay until Wednesday—or even if they only have a day to help out, we’re always looking for more help—they can go to Morethansport.org and find more information or email us at morethansportinfo@gmail.com . They can help by actually building, but we’re also looking for help financially—we have to raise some funds to build those homes. The more funds we raise, the more homes we can build. I’m going to be racing in Texas again this year so we’ll again be doing something in Texas. We’ll probably be doing something in Kansas, and we’re trying to create a movement to get athletes involved. It’s really a mindset change—to go out there, kill a race or PR but then after do a little bit for the community. I really got an awakening when I went to Mexico for a race. We were put up in a four-star resort and I was doing a bike ride and was a couple miles from the resort and I saw a bunch of kids playing in the woods and I realized this whole village was living in boxes and I just realized if every athlete gave $40 or $50, and there were 2,000 athletes racing, that could feed and house that village for like a year—it doesn’t take that much. It’s just trying to make a small shift and see if we can leave the locations we’ve enjoyed so much when we race a little more improved and give back and say thank you. We’ll do something again in Kona this year, too. As people qualify for Kona and want to do something a little different, email us and we’ll keep you posted. Anyone can be an ambassador. PHOTOS: Chris Lieto On The Queen K

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Sitting In With Chris Lieto

Magura RT 8TT: A Quantum Leap…

Cervélo teamed up with Magura to create a hydraulic rim brake specifically for the P5 , and the brakes are also compatible with any tri bike. Scroll through the photos at the top left of the page for more on the Magura RT 8TT. The hydraulic stopping system designed by Magura, a premier MTB brake manufacturer, is compatible with all road wheels. The lever mounts to any standard triathlon basebar and the caliper can be installed on any standard fork or frame brake mount. Although standard brake cables and housing both feel solid in-hand, the pressure applied through the cable and housing stretches the brake cable and compresses the housing, resulting in a mushy feeling and greater lever travel under hard braking. As the cable slides within the housing it creates friction that further hampers brake performance, a problem that has become more common thanks to the proliferation of hidden and integrated brakes. Anyone who has ridden a triathlon bike with extremely tight or circuitous brake cable routing is all too aware that a brake with twisted housing lacks stopping power and lags before reopening after braking. Once a few drops of sports drink leak into the housing, braking performance become even worse. Hydraulic brakes solve all of those problems. Although bikes with straight and simplistic brake routing certainly reduce the problems with cable-actuated brakes, a single ride aboard a mountain bike with hydraulic disc brakes makes the potential of hydraulic brakes immediately obvious, even though these are rim brakes, not disc. The Cervélo P4’s rear brake, one of the first truly integrated calipers, suffers from those issues and the Canadian company wanted a better solution for the P5. Rather than starting from scratch to design a hydraulic brake themselves, they approached Magura and suggested the two companies work together to create a hydraulic brake for the P5. Magura handled the hydraulic mechanism and Cervélo integrated the brake into the bike. PHOTOS: Cervélo P5 Cable braking systems use pulling force to squeeze the rim but hydraulic systems only push, they can’t pull. Hydraulic systems functions like this: A plunger is pushed into the hydraulic line running through the basebar when the rider squeezes the brake lever and forces fluid (the RT 8TT uses mineral oil) through the line. This fluid doesn’t compress and a twisted line doesn’t impair its movement, so the hydraulic line transmits all the pressure to the far end of the system, which actuates the brake. This fundamental change from pulling to pushing forced Magura to design a unique road caliper that functions with a hydraulic system. The Magura RT 8TT brake caliper has a piston that sits beneath two brake arms that actuate about pivot points above the piston. The piston drives upward and forces the upper segment of the arms outward to the sides, which rotates the brake arms and forces the lower portion to squeeze inward toward the rim. Magura claims the RT 8TT can create 44% more force than the nearest competitor listed in their presentation. On the road, it feels substantially more powerful and responsive than a cable-actuated brake. Perhaps the biggest difference in braking feel is the way stopping power ramps up with only a small increase in the pressure on the lever. Instead of putting a death grip on the brake lever to max out the brake caliper’s stopping force, the RT 8TT requires only a subtly tighter squeeze on the lever. Although it would certainly be easier to flip ass-over-teakettle with these brakes than with cable brakes, stopping power isn’t excessive or jerky. With just a little experience, we were able to quickly adjust our internal gauge for the pressure needed to slow the bike. These brakes are not, however, as powerful as hydraulic disc brakes on mountain bikes and they have a little more give when squeezing the rim as well. Although they don’t offer the same stopping performance of a hydraulic disc brake, they are strong and offer a supremely consistent, reliable connection with the brake caliper. They are a fantastic improvement over any other hidden or integrated brake. Don’t be surprised if every high-end triathlon bike comes with hydraulic calipers within a few years.

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Magura RT 8TT: A Quantum Leap…

Europe’s Winter Triathlon…

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Europe’s Winter Triathlon…

Photos: Javier Gomez

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Photos: Javier Gomez

Lesley Paterson Overcame…

Xterra world champion Lesley Paterson was plagued with fear of failure before finding success in the sport. Photo: Xterra When Lesley Paterson was four she would imagine she was Zola Budd and having gone on to become a world ­champion, she has proved dreams can come true. She is the best in the world at Xterra, an extreme triathlon, which includes a 1.5km swim in the ocean, 30km mountain biking and 11km trail run. She is also a coach, an actress and film producer. The journey to be such an ­all-round success has been hard and she has been plagued by such terrible ­self-doubt she feared it would crush her. But when Lesley, 31, falls she just picks herself back up. She was always a tomboy and was never drawn to traditional female sports. She grew up in Stirling and played rugby in a boys’ team from the age of seven. “I was always really sporty as a kid. I remember watching Zola Budd when I was four and I used to practise in a nearby field, running around barefoot in the grass,” said Lesley. RELATED PHOTOS: Lesley Paterson She played for Stirling County Rugby Club until she was 12 – the only girl in ­Scotland playing rugby, and with 250 boys in the club. “The boys either wanted to tackle me extra hard or were too scared to come near.” Her father Alistair was sporty and got her into fell running when she gave up rugby. She said: “I always loved to do anything that was muddy, gritty and adventurous. I loved the scenery, they were some of my best times. It is a very primal thing when you are running over the Scottish hills.” When Alistair helped found the Stirling Triathlon Club, he roped in his daughter. Read more: Dailyrecord.co.uk

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Lesley Paterson Overcame…

Large Pro Field Lined Up For…

Photo: Getty Images Saturday’s Challenge Wanaka, the sixth running of the New Zealand race, will feature its largest pro field yet. Highlighted by former Wanaka champions Jamie Whyte and Gina Crawford, the pro field spoke to the media at a press conference Thursday morning. Dubbed the “most scenic iron-distance race in the world,” the race is also known for its challenging course. The early-season race looks to be a battle between the Kiwis and the Aussies. Men’s Race In the men’s race, New Zealand’s Jamie Whyte is returning to defend his title. A relative newcomer to the long-course scene, Whyte had a podium finish at Challenge Vichy and finished fourth at Challenge Cairns last year. “Things have been going great,” he said. “This race is my big race for the summer. … Training has been spot on.” Aussie Courtney Ogden, the runner-up last year, has built a strong reputation with multiple iron-distance titles. He’s coming off an injury that in December caused him to finish Ironman Western Australia in a time of 11:50. “It’s one of the hardest courses on the circuit—Challenge and Ironman,” he said. “I’m looking forward to getting out there and getting the job done.” Bryan Rhodes, aka “Rhodesy,” is an experienced long-course racer with four iron-distance titles to his credit. Look for Rhodes to be a strong swim-biker on Saturday, staying toward the front through T2. Rhodes is familiar with the course, having competed the last two years in the relay format. “I’d always planned to do the race as an individual,” he said. “It works out pretty well in my schedule.” Team TBB athlete Aaron Farlow of Australia really only started racing iron-distance races in 2011, during which time he won Ironman UK. This will be his first time to race Challenge Wanaka. “I’m just looking to build on that this year,” he said. New Zealander Kieran Doe, a multiple iron-distance and 70.3 champion, might have lost a little sleep this week with the birth of his first child. He was also injured in a bike crash about three weeks ago, which gave him a concussion and a fractured bone in his hand. As another strong swim-biker, he’ll probably be toward the front with Rhodes heading into T2. “You can set the race up in the swim and bike, but it’s got to be won on the run,” he said. Other top men’s athletes are Danish athlete Jimmy Johnsen, who has won Challenge Barcelona and finished second at Challenge Copenhagen; Keegan Williams, a Kiwi athlete who has podiumed at this race before; prolific long-course racer Petr Vabrousek of the Czech Republic; American Team TBB athlete Scott DeFilippis; and 2008 Wanaka champion Marc Pschebizin of Germany. PHOTOS: 2011 Challenge Wanaka Triathlon Women’s Race Highlighting the women’s field is three-time Wanaka champion and course record holder Gina Crawford of New Zealand. This will be her fourth time to race Challenge Wanaka but first iron-distance race after giving birth to her son about six months ago. Since having the baby, her training time has dropped from about 30 to 35 hours a week to 20 hours a week, emphasizing quality over quantity. “Wanaka in particular is sort of like my home race, and it’s also a beautiful place to come,” she said. “The course is really honest—you can just get out there and focus on your own abilities.” Last year’s runner-up, Simone Maier, is a Wanaka local and will have the advantage of being the hometown favorite. Aussie Christie Sym was third last year and hopes to improve upon that finish. She’s optimistic this year, though she only had surgery eight weeks ago to remove her gallbladder, which was determined to be the cause of illness she’d been battling. “I might not be as fit as I want to be, but I’m healthy,” she said. Aussie Nicole Ward is a former Australian long course champion, has had podium finishes at half and full iron-distance triathlons and is known for her strong run splits. Also racing will be Aussie Jodi Scott.

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Large Pro Field Lined Up For…

Inside Triathlon’s Profile…

Photo: Matt Harbicht The (Deeply Determined, Exceptionally Sensitive, Sometimes Insecure and Downright Huge) Heart of a Champion This story was originally published in the September/October, 2011 issue of Inside Triathlon magazine , before Wellington went on to win her fourth Ironman world title in stunning fashion. It was the first in-depth profile of Wellington—one where a writer uses long interviews with friends and family to paint a picture of who Wellington is outside of sport—ever published. She was featured on the cover with a crown as the Queen of Ironman. PHOTOS: Chrissie Wellington’s Inside Triathlon Photo Shoot We all know Chrissie Wellington as a three-time Ironman world champion, the iron-distance world record holder (8:18:13), the Ironman world record holder (8:33:56) and the course record holder in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii (8:54:02). But few of us know who Wellington is as a person. Her fame has come so fast and furiously, getting to know the girl behind the glory has taken a backseat to acknowledging her many achievements. In fact, Wellington has never been the subject of an in-depth magazine profile. Recently, Wellington, who is originally from Norfolk, England, granted me access to a number of her closest acquaintances, and I shared a marathon heart-to-heart session with the icon herself, helping me to uncover the off-course, off-camera Chrissie. And I can attest, while she’s as obsessively driven and outrageously successful in other aspects of her life as she is in triathlon, she’s also down-to-earth, at times uncertain and even insecure. Walk into the home that Wellington rents with her boyfriend and fellow pro, Tom Lowe, on Boulder, Colo.’s north side and the first thing you’ll notice is the fireplace mantel. On it resides a collection of six greeting cards, inspirational missives given to Wellington by caring confidantes at various pivotal points in her life. One gives reassurance for her 2007 decision to quit a secure government job and make the precarious leap to professional sports. Another, a fierce “You showed them!” following Kona 2007, refers to the teammates who shunned Wellington when she first joined Brett Sutton’s TeamTBB training squad. Wellington carries the cards everywhere she travels. Wellington’s friend and family relationships are utterly core to her being, and she expends massive amounts of time and energy nurturing her connections around the globe. “As a result of living in so many cities in the U.K. and traveling to numerous countries, Chrissie has met countless people,” said her mother, Lin Wellington. “It never ceases to amaze us how she manages to keep in touch.” The three-time world champion is far more concerned with the goings on in her friends’ lives than in spouting off about her own. “When you see Chrissie—and sometimes it drives me slightly mad—she bombards you with questions about you,” said Naomi Flood, Wellington’s best mate from graduate school at the University of Manchester. “She’s not one of these people who wants to talk endlessly about herself.” Matthew Wellington, Chrissie’s younger brother, agrees: “Pretentiousness and my sister are like chalk and cheese. It just doesn’t happen—ever.” Georgina Cashmore, a former co-worker of Wellington’s and one of her dearest friends to this day, summed up her pal’s sincerity by saying, “Chrissie will always make space for you in her life. If she says she will be there, she will be there. If she can’t be there, she will tell you she can’t. She will protect me beyond all else. She rightly expects the same in return and knows that no matter what I will always love, support and ground her. It is a no-fuss friendship—we tell each other what we think even if it’s not what the other wants to hear. She farts—I tell her it stinks.” I repeated Cashmore’s words to Wellington, and her eyes welled up (despite a burst of laughter). “That’s touching to me more than anything,” she said, “because it means I’m doing something right. [It’s] sort of a vindication of who I am—that I’m valued as a friend, not just as a sporting icon.” In a way, she hoards love and support; she holds it close, almost in fear it might slip away. “Chrissie doesn’t do second in anything—not as a friend, a daughter, at work, in training or in competition,” Cashmore said. “She takes second place extremely personally and it rocks her to the core to feel that she has failed in any part of her life. Chrissie fears how her actions will be interpreted or how they will impact others, she fears not being able to be true to herself and true to others, but most of all she fears being away from those she loves.” The love Wellington cherishes is a two-way street, however, even with those she hasn’t met. “Letters and e-mails and messages—I save them all. I save every single message that I get to my website,” she said. “Because it’s important.” She replies to fans personally as often as possible. Wellington’s heart stretches even wider when it comes to the charitable causes she supports—groups such as the Blazeman Foundation for ALS, a nonprofit that seeks to find a cure for the fatal disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord; the KIDS Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to childhood injury prevention and recovery; and GoTRIbal, which seeks to use endurance sports to empower women. Wellington’s belief in charity is something she harbored as a young girl. “In 1986 [at the age of 9] Chrissie was watching a program on TV that explained the plight of some people in Africa who needed urgent medical attention,” said Lin Wellington. “Without hesitation, Chrissie jumped up off her chair and announced that she was going to organize a ‘bring and buy sale’ in our village, to raise money for those afflicted. The result was that over 300 pounds was raised, which in those days was quite a lot of money.” The following year, she wrote a variation of the theater production “Aladdin” and then persuaded her classmates to perform the piece before a packed schoolhouse, announcing to the audience that it was a benefit for victims of the famine in Ethiopia. She again raised a significant sum. “My dream, even as a kid, was to make a difference in the world,” Wellington said. “I remember being so disturbed by the images of famine. I would just get incredibly saddened by inequality and suffering. I try to say this in interviews now and I think it kind of sounds trite, but I want my legacy to be more than any world record. Being a role model for kids, being quite vocal about development and advocating for charities—it’s not to be a goody two-shoes. It’s not to pull a media stunt. It’s because sport has power and as sports people we have a platform. That’s really my motivational force.” Early on Matthew Wellington noticed his sister’s desire to make a mark on the world: “She could have been a physicist on the Hadron Collider if she wanted. She could have been a hedge fund manager making 4 million a year. But instead she worked for the government and for an NGO in Nepal.” Indeed, Wellington’s original plan was to be a lawyer, but a two-year stint traveling abroad opened her eyes to a new world, one in which she felt compelled to champion the underprivileged. She received her master’s degree in development studies from Manchester, then landed a U.K. government job working for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that combined her academic aptitude with her natural public-speaking savvy. While at DEFRA, Wellington represented the U.K. at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, wrote and advised on ministerial speeches for British dignitaries including Prime Minister Tony Blair and DEFRA Secretary of State Margaret Beckett, and spearheaded negotiations for the U.K.’s environmental reconstruction policy in Iraq. “What’s weird about my life now,” Wellington said, “is I had this whole life beforehand that nobody really knows about. I suppose everyone does—but it’s not like I was Macca [Chris McCormack], growing up dreaming of racing Ironman. I didn’t watch Ironman Hawaii on TV. I didn’t know it existed. I had never heard of it.” Instead, her intensity and passion were channeled first into academics and then into her professional life. Eventually, this segued into athletics. “I traveled through Africa, Asia and Australia. In Sydney, I started to feel pretty unhealthy from all the eating and drinking I had done. I remember not wanting to run because I’d go bright red, so I just started walking,” she reminisced. “Then I entered the City to Surf 14K race. I was very nervous; I’d done no training. In my diary I wrote, ‘This is going to be torture. I’m going to go bright red. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish.’ It was 14K. I did it in 1:19 [a little over 9-minute-per-mile pace] and I was exhilarated! So when I got back for grad school I ran and swam to become healthier. Being an obsessive-compulsive person, that grew quite quickly into exercising every day.” Best mate Flood laughs when she remembers Wellington’s initial foray into running: “She just kept running. It was a bit like Forrest Gump. It wasn’t necessarily healthy. She didn’t have good trainers. Her feet were cut to bits. The blisters were phenomenal. It was really horrible at one point, but she wouldn’t stop running. It was kind of her way of focusing on something.” Following her time at Manchester, Wellington lived and worked in London, where she ran the London Marathon as a fundraising event and dabbled in short-course triathlon. Tammy Nelson, a friend with whom Wellington shared an internship selling charity Christmas cards, recalled, “She did the marathon in 2002. She did really well—she came in the top 100 women [83rd, in a time of 3:08:17, to be exact], which was pretty good considering she was just doing it for fun and for charity. It was at that point I realized she must actually be pretty good at sport.” Disillusioned with high-level government bureaucracy and desiring more hands-on development experience, Wellington took a sabbatical to work in Nepal, where she helped to improve water and sanitation conditions. She also improved her own endurance. “There’s a town called Pokhara, 200K from Kathmandu [Nepal]. We wanted to go there for New Year’s Eve, so we mountain biked,” she said. “It was me, the Nepali mountain bike champion and a few friends. We set off at 7 in the morning, going and going and going, on these shit roads, carrying our rucksacks. It’s friggin’ not flat. But I would not give in. In the end it was only me and the Nepali mountain bike champ—everyone else got on the bus. We arrived, had a shower and partied all night long. That was quite epic.” Her brother believes that she found her way into professional triathlon simply because she loved running and riding her bike. “I reckon some Ironman athletes train from when they’re 12, 13 years old. Christine [he eschews her well-known nickname] was mountain biking through the Himalayas only five or six years ago,” he said. “She didn’t even know she was training for Ironman. If there is ever a film written about Christine, it will be a hybrid of ‘Rocky’ and ‘The Motorcycle Diaries.’ ‘Rocky’ because from early on she did this without money, without sponsorship, without huge amounts of specific training. Rocky came from nothing and trained in the woods lifting logs, whilst Christine biked across Nepal. And the analogy to the Che Guevara character in ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ is her freedom of spirit and her ambition to travel and see the world. And the two connected is brilliant.” Eventually, the pull of competition proved irresistible, and after winning the overall title at the age-group world championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2006, Wellington gave herself a one-year window to succeed as a professional athlete. That was all the time her savings would allow. She sought the guidance of tough-love triathlon coach Brett Sutton, who, through his controversial school-of-hard-knocks approach, helped channel and calm the rookie’s overwrought nature. “Brett treated me like shit when I arrived. Like absolute shit,” stated Wellington. “He went to great lengths to make me angry. He didn’t pay any attention. He welcomed the fact that all the other girls hated me, because I was a threat. I’ve spoken to Brett since then. He knew I had something special, so the way he approaches that is to not make that person feel special. He put me in a house with five guys and told them to steal my food, throw things, be boorish, turn the music up—just to toughen me up and make me into a friggin’ warrior. But I guess it worked.”

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ITU Announces Increase In…

The International Triathlon Union (ITU) has confirmed the prize money for the 2012 ITU World Triathlon Series, with the total prize pool surpassing two million dollars. See the press release below: Photo: Delly Carr/Triathlon.org With an overall increase of 15 percent, prize money from the eight series events and the year-end bonus pool will total $2.06-million (all funds USD). “Across the board we are seeing tremendous growth in our premier series – from spectators to participants to sponsors to broadcast partners and now with prize money for our elite athletes,” said Marisol Casado, ITU President and IOC Member.  ”On the back this growth, 2012 is poised to be the greatest and most exciting triathlon season to date.” The Grand Final in Auckland will feature a $270,000 prize purse while the prize money for every other series event will be $170,000. Also, each race and the Grand Final will also now award prize money down to the 20th place, whereas in 2011 only athletes who finished in the top-15 claimed prize money. Athletes will vie for an additional $600,000 in the year-end bonus pool which pays the top 30 ranked women and men – up from top-20 – at season’s end. This figure is up from $500,000 in the 2011 season. Overall, it means that there is an increase of $260,000 to the overall pool, up from $1.8-million to $2.06-million.  Finishing the year atop the series rankings will not only earn an athlete the coveted title of “ITU World Champion” but also net $60,000 of the bonus pool. The 2012 ITU World Triathlon Series kicks off on April 14-15 in Sydney, Australia.  With eight events in eight different countries, the 2012 ITU World Champions will be crowned at the Grand Final in Auckland, New Zealand on Oct. 20-22. The ITU World Triathlon Series was launched in 2009, expanding the former single-day World Championship race.  Points are accrued throughout the season and athletes who win the overall series are crowned the ITU World Champions. RELATED PHOTOS: ITU’s Photos Of The Year

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ITU Announces Increase In…

Photos: Cervélo P5

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Photos: Cervélo P5

Cervélo Unveils The P5

Photo: Aaron Hersh The integrated tri bike from Cervélo is finally here. The undisputed people’s champion of triathlon bikes has once again catapulted itself to the forefront of tri bike technology and innovation with its newest creation, the P5. An unprecedented braking system, a shift in geometry style and exceptionally responsive ride feel combined with Cervélo’s ability to create aerodynamic bikes makes the P5 a blockbuster. Its fit adjustment range, however, has one major limitation. RELATED PHOTOS: Cervélo P5 Frame Shape The frame is UCI-legal. Cervélo offers a triathlon-specific fork that is not. The frame conforms to the regulations stating that tubes must be no more than three times deeper than their width, but Cervélo used a loophole to stretch the seat tube beyond the typical interpretation of the rule. Cervélo senior advanced R&D engineer Damon Rinard says the UCI allows “gussets” that support and connect the frame tubes as long as they are no deeper than the original tube dimension. The P5’s seat tube is 27mm wide, which means it must be 81mm or shorter in the longest direction, and the seat tube is almost exactly that length. The gusset connecting the seat tube and the top tube, however, is another 81mm. These connected elements create a surface that is 162mm at its longest point. A second gusset is used to connect the seat stays to the seat tube that extends the segment of the tube deeper than the UCI’s 3:1 ratio lower on the seat tube. At its widest point, the P5 actually has a 6:1 ratio, yet it still abides by the UCI’s 3:1 rule. Go figure. Cervélo contends that building a bike with a single tube shape doesn’t make sense. The rider’s body and wheel influence the air flowing around the bike in different ways at different sections of the bike, so Cervélo broke the bike into discrete segments to design shapes optimized for each condition. As a result, the P5 has different tube shapes from the aerobar to the back of the frame. They’re sticking with a teardrop-shaped airfoil instead of a truncated airfoil design for the downtube and aerobar, but some portions including the seat tube have a chopped, flat tail. The same P5 frame is used for both the triathlon versions and road time trial versions of the bike. As a result, Cervélo did not use outrageously deep profiles for the downtube or head tube such as those on the Quintana Roo Illicito and Specialized Shiv. The triathlon fork, however, is extremely deep. The fork blades and the extension off the front of the bike both create airfoil shapes much deeper than the road version. We tested both bikes in very windy conditions and noticed a slightly greater influence from the wind on the triathlon version. Cervélo elected to stick with horizontal dropouts, which make wheel removal and reinsertion more difficult than vertical dropouts. These dropouts also allow the gap between the seat tube and the tire to be finely adjusted. Rinard says a gap of 2-6mm is aerodynamically ideal and there is no performance difference within that range, taking into account the rotational aerodynamic resistance against the wheel in its direction of motion created when the air moving with the tire collides with the frame. Hexagonal head screws are sunken into the dropouts. They can be backed out to space the wheel away from the frame to widen the gap or accommodate a 25c tire. The bike is optimized for 23mm tires and when the screws are all the way in the bike, tires of this width fit precisely with the frame. The 27mm-wide seat tube is another change Cervélo made from the P4 to the P5 because of the trend to wider wheels and tires. The P4’s seat tube is 25mm wide, a shape that is optimal for narrower tires, but the P5’s is 27mm at its widest point. The broader tube helps smooth airflow from the frame to the tire and should also improve lateral stiffness. Brakes Cervélo teamed up with Magura to create a hydraulic rim brake for the P5. Cables are out. Magura, a premier MTB brake manufacturer and the sole supplier of all BMW motorcycle brakes, designed a hydraulic stopping system that is compatible with all road wheels and mounts to any standard triathlon basebar. Amazingly, these hydraulic brakes are lighter than cable brake systems. Although standard brake cables and housing both feel solid in-hand, the pressure applied through the cable and housing stretches the brake cable and compresses the housing, resulting in a mushy feeling and greater lever travel under hard braking. As the cable slides within the housing it creates friction that further hampers brake performance, a problem that has become more common thanks to the proliferation of hidden and integrated brakes. Anyone who has ridden a triathlon bike with extremely tight or circuitous brake cable routing is all too aware that a brake with twisted housing lacks stopping power and lags before reopening after braking. Once a few drops of sports drink leak into the housing, braking performance becomes even worse. Hydraulic brakes solve all of those problems. Although bikes with straight and simplistic brake routing certainly reduce the problems with cable-actuated brakes, a single ride aboard a mountain bike with hydraulic disc brakes makes the potential of hydraulic brakes immediately obvious, even though these are rim brakes, not disc. The Cervélo P4’s rear brake, one of the first truly integrated calipers, suffers from those issues and the Canadian company wanted a better solution for the P5. Rather than starting from scratch to design a hydraulic brake itself, Cervélo approached Magura and suggested the two companies work together to create a hydraulic brake for the P5. Magura handled the hydraulic mechanism and Cervélo integrated the brake into the bike.

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Cervélo Unveils The P5