Canadian National Championship – The men side / Et nos Québécois !

For the fourth year in a row, the beaufiful city of Kelowna (B-C) is hosting the ITU Canadian National Championship. The course is a great one :

Swim : Beach start, 2 laps of 750m in Okanagan Lake.

Bike : 6 laps with one challenging hill only 2km in. (Right after the swim, it can get interesting to eventually break up the pack). Unfortunatly, correct me if i’m wrong, the hill didn’t actually made a difference in the past 4-5 years on this course. But not sure about this (I always was in the 2nd or 3rd pack… not on the front row…).

Run :  4  laps. Flat. Along the lake.

My guess is that Simon Whitfield can of course still do it, as he did so many times in the past decade. (People tend to forget in a very short period of time what an athlete did in 15 years…) But, that said, the fact is that two other canadians, Kyle Jones and Brent McMahon, are in an outstanding « Olympic » shape. The last one just won the Tizsy World Cup last Sunday and the first one was 19th at London WCS, in an  » (almost?) better than world championship field »… We will see what happens on Sunday. Unfortunatly, I just saw that Brent is not on the start list for Kelowna.

Others to watch on the men side are John Bird, Jordan Bryden, Andrew McCartney and Matt Vierula. Some others could also do very well at their first senior national championship : Alexander Hinton, John Rasmussen, Taylor Reid, Ian Donald. Swim portion willl be important for these last athletes but believe me, they are aware of it.

Nos Québécois seront également présents ! Yanik Leduc sera le  »chef » de notre délégation, lui qui est un habitué de cette compétition. Jean-Philippe Thibodeau, Joel Desgreniers, Raphael Rivard complèteront. Trois sur quatre proviennent de mon club le Rouge et Or… pas mal !

I wish all the best for all the athletes competing this weekend. The Kelowna Apple Triathlon was one of my favorite ITU venue in the past years. One of the best place in Canada to host a National Championship. Enjoy !