SAINTFIELD’S Suzie Cave has just been crowned the new British Senior Triathle champion and has qualified for the World Championships in Florida this October.
She also won the British qualifier for the European Championships last month and heads off to Madeira in two weeks time with a realistic hope of bagging a medal.
Triathle, a shoot, swim and run competition, is a new discipline for the civil servant as she has concentrated on the modern pentathlon in recent years.
“I have been training all winter for all five of my disciples — swim, fence, show jump, combined shoot and run,” she said.
Suzie has had to undergo some specialist training for the triathle, but all the hours of extra practice have paid off.
“I had to specialise my training a bit for this from the start of this year, adding in extra sessions to practice transitions and run/swim continuous.
“Not many pools would allow you to swim, jump out and start running, so I had the use of my coach’s swim tank and running round his car park in a wet suit with hat and goggles was the answer,” she added.
To win both recent qualifiers and come away as Senior British Champion was a huge surprise to Suzie, allied to the fact that her times were two minutes under the European and World qualifying times.
“Doing modern pentathlon I knew my strengths are run and shoot and short distance swimming, all of which makes up Triathle, Suzie explained.
“Many of the triathletes are runners and swimmers and struggle with the shoot element. So, my coach and GB coaches suggested I give it a go this year. My shoot was what won the event.
“I was neck and neck with the previous British champion most of the way round. She would gain on me during the swim and transitions, but I would pull away from her in the shoot and run and luckily managed to keep ahead of her on the last run which involved an incline to the finish,” she said.
“By my fourth time up it, this incline felt like Everest, but my training around Stormont Estate had me well conditioned for that.”
Suzie has an extremely busy summer ahead of her and is so looking forward to the challenges ahead.
“My focus now is Traithle Europeans in June in Madeira, then Worlds in Florida in October. In August I will hopefully have both the laser run Europeans in Germany and Masters Modern Pentathlon European Championships in Hungary.”