Sweetland perseveres for top-10 finish
When it started hurting, Kirsten Sweetland said she pushed herself through it by thinking to herself: “All points are valuable.”
It’s all about qualification points for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, of which the Victoria triathlete picked up a bunch for her 10th-place finish Sunday in the Edmonton ITU World Series race on a cold and raw late-summer morning in Hawrelak Park.
“It was not an ideal day. It was a hard-fought race . . . I was really beat up in the swim . . . so I’m proud of the top-10 result,” said Sweetland, after arriving back to the Island on Monday. “I didn’t expect it.” That’s because the 26-year-old is just over a severe bacterial infection, just the latest in a series of health issues that have hindered her career.
“I’m still on antibiotics, so it’s not ideal yet,” said the Stelly’s grad, who had to miss the Toronto Pan Am Games earlier this summer because of the infection but was back in time for the Hamburg ITU World Series race later in July.
There are three Canadian women’s triathlon berths available for Rio 2016 with Sweetland, former world No. 1 Paula Findlay of Edmonton, rising Victoriabased Calgarian Ellen Pennock and Sarah-Anne Brault of Quebec City all world-class candidates, along with younger challengers such as 22-year-old Dominika Jamnicky of Port Hope, Ont.
So the points from Edmonton held Sweetland, the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games silver medallist, in good stead toward her ultimate goal of Rio. The Islander finished the 750-metre swim, 20K bike race and 5K run in 59:56 with Jamnicky 15th in 1:00:31 and Alex Coates of Calgary 35th in 1:02:40. Vicky Holland of England won in 58:55, with Flora Duffy of Bermuda second in 59:04 and Gillian Backhouse of Australia third in 59:10.
Richard Murray of South Africa won the men’s race in 53:19 ahead of Spanish great Javier Gomez’s second-place 53:23. Andrew Yorke of Caledon, Ont., was top Canadian in eighth place.
Next up in two weeks is the 2015 ITU season-finale World Series Grand Final in Chicago, out of which the top eight finishers qualify automatically for the 2016 Olympics. Otherwise, competitors need to just keep piling up those qualification points.
“Now it’s a matter of recovering at home, and sharpening up, for Chicago,” said Sweetland, who is aiming to be among the nearly 50 Island-based athletes projected to be competing in Rio next year.