Simon Hoppe won his fifth Mini-Series Triathlon from 5 starts on
Wednesday, and took the Mini-Series Trophy for 2011 with the maximum 50
points.
Steve Giles had gone into the race equal with Simon on 40 points but
from 5 races. He added 2 points tonight, so it was essential for Simon
that he completed a fifth race.
Roz Giles had already won the women's Trophy also with a maximum of 50
points and again won a sixth round tonight.
The other 2 women's races have been won by Georgie Freeman who has 47
points.
It is an athlete's best 5 races to count, with 10 points for a win in
each race down to 1 point for 10th place.
1. Simon Hoppe 10 x 10 x 10 10 x 10 = 50 points
2. Steve Giles 8 9 x 6 8 9 x 8 = 42 points
3= Rob Hammond 6 6 8 7 x 8 7 6 = 36 points
3= Jaap Flikweert x 10 9 8 x x x 9 = 36 points
1. Roz Giles 10 10 10 10 x 10 x 10 = 50 points
2. Georgie Freeman x x 9 9 10 9 10 9 = 47 points.
Wednesday's race was the penultimate race in this year's 9 race series
as the night's already start to draw in. Tom Freeman in his first Mini-
Series race lead the swimmers out, 3 seconds ahead of Neil Tandy and 9
seconds ahead of sister, Georgie. Simon Hoppe was 30 seconds further
back in 4th, closely followed by Rob Hammond with Jaap Flikweert a few
more seconds behind.
Jaap made up the 17 second deficit on Simon and the two of them were
changing places on the bike, before coming into T2 together. At this
stage Neil had been caught and managed to hang on for a while, before
coming in 27 seconds adrift. A pack of 5 cyclists fought it out for 4th
place with Steve Giles eventually bringing them in within just 6
seconds of one another, in a closely fought contest.
However, Jaap and Simon had the fastest bike splits of the night, and
were over a minute and 40 seconds ahead of this group. Simon pulled
away on the run to win by just 24 seconds. Steve had the fastest run of
the night, but was too far behind to improve on his 3rd position.
Nevertheless, both Jaap and Steve recorded Personal Best times tonight,
by an astonishing 1:27 minutes and 1:22 minutes respectively - a
difficult thing to do when you have been competing for as long as they
have.
16 competitor's recorded PBs in all from 36 finishers, including 2
first timers.
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Simon will not be competing in the World Championships in Beijing
now, but Georgina Jennings WILL be. Georgina is the reigning British,
European and World Champion in the Sprint Triathlon in her Age Group
and will be looking for a clean sweep this year, having missed out on
the 2010 European Gold by one place.