South African Triathlon Championship: Raynard Tissink kicks ass at men’s elite race
March 4th, 2007 by Nikola Tosic
Unfortunately I did not have time to watch all the races. I was only able to follow the elite men race and I missed the age group races which I actually enjoy much more. But I was pleasantly surprised to see Raynard Tissink among all the Olympic distance “kids”. Seeing him race them was such a weird yet awesome metaphor for the difference between the two sports: ITU triathlon and Ironman triathlon.
As you all know, ITU triathlon allowed drafting several years ago which was a dramatic change in the sport. Drafting changed the strategy from who is strongest in three disciplines all together towards swim with the group, draft in the bike group and than only start racing on the run. Ironman on the other hand is a non drafting event (questionable since now the 7m drafting rule is almost allowing drafting) during which you really have to be strong in each of the disciplines. However Ironman does not require a strong swim as the swim is not proportionate to the other two disciplines.
That’s why it was cool to see this live experiment of an Ironman champion racing ITU elites.
Since there were only 20 elite men more or less all of them swam out in one group. Raynard was somewhere in the middle. Than the people I was with craved coffee and we had a little break from watching the race.
When I got back to it I saw this huge pile of muscle pound his bike 100m in front of a chasing group of about 10 triathletes. My first thought was: Who is this idiot riding in front like this? What is the point? Does he not know that he is wasting energy? And this person seamed scary and super driven. Like he would break his bike in half with every single pedal stroke. When he passed I wanted to move away from the road an extra meter or so, just to make sure the beast does not eat me or something.
Than I realized it was Raynard Tissink.
He kept riding in front of that group alone. They were ten or so and they could not catch him. Maybe they could if they really really wanted to but they were too lazy or scared and used to riding in the group and depriving us, the spectators, of anything interesting to watch. But Tissink made up for it. I saw him riding alone in the second and third lap, but when he was finishing the fourth lap he was almost 45sec in front of them. He really kicked their asses.
First Tissink, than the rest, the last lap
Of course they caught him on the run. Someone who runs marathons does not have the ability to run a 10km fast enough to be competitive in this kind of a race. He finished in top ten anyway which was great.
I had to walk to him later and say it was awesome, and I say it again in this blog. It reminded me of the good old days when I enjoyed watching short course triathlon, when guys like Simon Lessing, Mark Allen, Mike Pigg and even Spencer Smith would suffer on the bike for each second.
Obviously I am choosing sides here but I can not help it, I am really really bored with ITU drafting races and I am the first one to say that that is the most boring sport ever. You have to watch a bunch of people swim and cycle together without any wish to compete only to sprint a bit at the last 30mins. If you do not quit watching or fall asleep during the first hour and a half you might see some racing during the run.
But than again why would you bother, there are other sports that are actually competitive. First there is age group triathlon (again so sorry I did not see the racing), than there is Ironman and than there is football, boxing, swimming etc…
Anyway, I thank Raynard Tissink for making the ITU men’s elite race worth watching and for the reminder of what triathlon was about.
Results and photos will follow…
