Pacific Coast Triathlon
Newport Beach, California
July 20, 2003
(www.slowtwitch.com)
"I have never seen a post-race buffet like that," I overheard Emilio De Soto say after the Pacific Coast Triathlon. That's quite a comment when you consider that the 23-year veteran of triathlon has raced hundreds of times on all the World's continents save Antarctica.
But that's the Pacific Coast Triathlon for you, put on by Bob Cuyler—dentist, Team USA veteran, and concert bassoonist pursuing his doctorate in musical performance in his spare time—and Olympic kayaker Bill Leach who, when at age-50, could get off the bike with any pro triathlete in the sport.
The post-race food has always been a feature at this race, certainly because it was presented by Dan Neyenhuis, De Soto's partner in De Soto clothing. One of Neyenhuis' (yet another Team USA veteran) many successful ventures is a catering business.
When you get a lot of overachievers together and tell them to put on a race, well, they put it on the way they do everything else in life. So when USA Triathlon executive director asked them to put on a pro race as part of the 6-race "Road to Athens" tour in the U.S. this year, their first go-round at an ITU-format race was predictably top cabin. Locke's comment today (the day after the race) in his semi-private letter to the industry was, "Both races [pro and the 1400-person AG race] were just flawless."
What do I like about it the ITU format? The whole "pontoon" thing is interesting. You pick your race position the night before, and there's a bit of ceremony involved. Since there's an actual pontoon or, in this case, a 1" x 6" board about 150 feet long, painted orange, on the ground, it's sort of hard for an athlete to fudge his way forward. "You can curl your toes over the edge of the board," athletes were cautioned in the pre-race meeting. With this format there's no forward creep when the starter counts down to "three" (you know, when you feel like a stupid ass if you're the one remaining person who waits on the start line for, "Two, one, go."
The ITU also has very precise nomenclature, and it's all explained beforehand. After the ITU designate gets through with you, he says, "You're now in the hands of the starter," and I get the impression it's always that exact phrase right before the gun goes off in every ITU event. It vaguely reminds me of something they say at NASA before a Shuttle launch. I can almost hear someone at Command Central, to the seven astronauts strapped in and looking straight up and out the window, "You're now in the hands of the starter."
Aussie Michellie Jones, a triathlon silver medalist at the Sydney Olympics, won the race, and an 18-year-old Aussie protege of hers, Maxine Seear, was second. Seear was way the fastest swimmer/runner, and she—the fifth place finisher in junior worlds last year—is one of a string of neophytes to get tutelage from Michellie (she and her husband Pete Coulson have been taking care of up and coming Aussies, like Chris McCormack almost a decade ago, for years).
Simon Lessing won the men's race quite easily. He's on a tear now, what with The Man (Dave Scott) coaching him and Ves Mandaric making him a new Yaqui bike every month for him to try out (that's Ves on the left, conversing with Murphy Reinschrieber, Lessing's agent).
It being Newport Beach and all, there were a lot of nice looking women, and mostly they were walking around bored, waiting for their average looking, but high-earning, husbands and boyfriends to finish the race. This was novel for Monty and I as we, living up in the Antelope Valley a couple of hours away, are generally favorably impressed when we run across a woman in our neighborhood who still sports a full set of teeth.
As for us, Monty bested 70 finishers in our age group and won the 45-49 while I got spanked quite handily, finishing 8th. Since he has a pacemaker, I figure Monty has an unfair advantage. He can't die. Literally. Like a chicken, if you cut off his head his heart would still keep on beating and his body would probably run around the barnyard. Bionic though he is, they still let him race without tieing anything, like an arm or leg, behind his back. It's a loophole in the rules. Meanwhile, back to the drawing board for me.
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