Reid, Shaw and White to Race Cape Town
Ireland’s best ranked international athlete Aileen Reid makes a return to top-level racing this weekend when she lines out in Cape Town for the third stopover of the ITU World Triathlon Series.
With an exciting line up of top women on the start list, Cape Town promises to be a close run affair. Add to this the on-going scramble for points before the Olympic qualification period closes in the middle of next month and Sunday’s race could be the most exciting yet this season.
For Reid, with her place at the Rio Olympics already secured, Cape Town is about putting in a performance she can build from in the coming months.
She finished 5th at ETU Quarteira in Portugal three weeks ago, a promising result coming at the end of a long winter. But with her focus firmly on peaking for Rio in August, she told us she is working on her processes rather then her results.
Shaw and White line up in Men’s Race
Straight after the finish of the women’s race, Ben Shaw and Russel White will line out against the likes of Mario Mola and Johnny Brownlee in a 64-athlete strong men’s field.
Shaw featured prominently in his last race at Gold Coast in Australia where he broke clear of the main pack towards the end of the bike leg and exited T2 as the leader of the race. Sunday’s sprint distance race will make this a harder prospect but don’t be surprised to see more brave attacking from Shaw once he gets on to the bike.
Like Aileen Reid, Russel White opened his season in promising form with a 13th place finish earlier this month at ETU Quarteira. Just last week he was spotted sprinting for victory at a local 10km close to his training base in Scotland, practice that might help in what promises to be a close run affair on Sunday.
The men’s race gets underway at 15:30 on Sunday, you can follow its progress via Triathlon Ireland’s twitter feed.
