Pilgrim and Smith impress in Florida

Bermuda’s young and old triathletes represented the island overseas at the weekend.

In Clermont, Florida, two of the island’s outstanding junior triathletes produced excellent performances in the Clermont Draft Legal Challenge Triathlon weekend.

Leading the way was 12-year-old Alex Pilgrim, competing in the F1 Youth Super Sprint event for 12-to-16-year-olds.

Despite being one of the youngest competitors in the race and in a strong field of US elite juniors, Pilgrim finished sixth out of 33 over the 375m swim, 10km bike and 2.5km run in a time of 36 minutes 58 seconds.

Pilgrim exited the water in 6:29 and then put together a strong bike of 17:57 and run of 10:34. The race was won by Ricardo Reyes of Florida in 34:27.

Tyler Smith, at just 15, was the youngest competitor in the Under-25 Elite Development race over 750 metre swim, 20km bike and 5km run but was not intimidated as he posted an excellent time of 1:05:06 to finish 35th in a field of 75. Smith finished with split times of 12:41 swim, 31:25 bike and 19:08 run.

Meanwhile, over 8,000 miles away Gary Taylor and Tats Hoshina competed over 3.9km swim, 180km bike and 42.2km run in the New Zealand Ironman in Taupo.

Hoshina, the CEO of Tokio Millenium, who recently announced the renewal of Tyler Butterfield’s sponsorship deal, finished 63rd out of 142 finishers in the men’s 50-54 age group and 673rd overall in a field of 1,586.

After exiting the water in 1hr
26 minutes and 36 seconds, Hoshina worked his way through the field with a bike time of 6:16:43 and a run of 4:24:47 for the marathon.

Taylor, competing in the men’s 55-59 age group, finished 53rd in his age group out of 87 finishers and 1,108 overall in a time of 14:06:10 with splits of 1:13:04 (swim), 7:22:00 (bike) and 5:13:55  (run).

Taylor and Hoshina had the opportunity to spend time with Bevan Docherty, the defending champion and course record holder whose home town is Taupo.

Docherty, who was the guest speaker in November at the Bermuda Triathlon Association’s Prize Giving Dinner, could not, however, produce the same form as he did in 2013 as he dropped out early on in the run when running with a group of three in second place.

The race was won by last year’s runner up, Marco Albert of Estonia, who distanced himself from the field on the bike and held on well in the marathon to finish in 8:17:33.