Making their mark

Bahrain Victorious 13 stamped its mark on the historic Noosa Triathlon this year, with Hayden Wilde taking gold and Henri Schoeman bronze, writes Lisa Pringle.

With a deep field featuring many athletes targeting Paris 2024, it was a blazing fast race over the standard distance – a 1.5km swim, 40kme non-drafting bike leg, and 10km run.

Having come out of the swim about 42 seconds behind swim leaders Jamie Riddle, Matthew Hauser and Schoeman, Wilde powered to the front in the latter half of the bike leg. The Tokyo Olympic bronze medalist capitalised on his bike and run prowess to claim the win and a new course record of 1:41:56 at the 40th edition of the race, finishing 13 seconds ahead of Hauser despite losing time to the Australian in transition.

Rio Olympic bronze medalist Schoeman took the final step on the podium for Bahrain Victorious 13.

Wilde is the first international athlete to win Noosa Triathlon since 2015, and the first male athlete from New Zealand since 2001.

He said, “Everyone was talking about the Noosa Tri and how awesome it is, and finally here myself and really experienced the feelings. The course is amazing, the roads were just pristine out there and just made us ride so fast.

“It’s always nice to beat the Aussies. We lost a couple of sports against them over the past couple of months, so yeah it was nice to bring it home, especially in Australia.

“We have that rivalry, but we love each other at the end of the day and it’s just nice the camaraderie of everyone coming together here.”

Amelia Watkinson finished 13th among the women.Wilde and Watkinson will now take on the middle distance at Ironman 70.3 Melbourne this coming weekend, joining fellow Bahrain Victorious 13 star Lauren Parker on the start line. Watkinson came second in the previous year’s edition and will no doubt be on the hunt to improve on that finish.