Island triathltes off to Commonwealth Games

Sharpe, Ridenour named to Canadian team

Matt Sharpe of Victoria, one of six triathletes named Monday to the Canadian team for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, described it as a “dress rehearsal for the Olympics.”

Also named was 17-year-old Desirae Ridenour of Cowichan Bay, who makes her step up to the senior national team, after winning three gold medals for B.C. last summer at the Canada Games.

“[Ridenour] is extremely talented and this is very exciting for her,” said Sharpe, a Claremont grad and native of Campbell River, who rallied for four top-10 finishes in the 2017 World Cup circuit, after breaking his collarbone in April.

“This is a good young group we have coming through.”

Rounding out the team is women’s world championships fifth-place Joanna Brown of Carp, Ont., 2016 Rio Olympian Tyler Mislawchuk of Oak Bluff, Man., Dominika Jamnicky of Guelph, Ont., and Alexis Lepage of Gatineau, Que.

Triathlon Canada is based in Victoria and four of the six selected Games athletes train here at the national performance centre. All six will gather on the Island next month to begin their preparations for the Commonwealth Games, which run April 4-15 in Gold Coast, Australia.

“This is an opportunity for our group to go through a multi-sport Games process and see how it responds to that setting,” said Sharpe, who was fourth in the team event at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

“This is a marquee event for our sport with a lot of the top triathlon countries being in the Commonwealth.”

It will be a halfway-point gauge in the quadrennial to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

“The future of our sport is in good hands with this fiercely determined group of athletes at its core,” said Eugene Liang, high-performance director of Triathlon Canada, in a statement.

“They have all made huge progress in their transition into elite racing, and are a key part of our NextGen strategy that puts additional focus on the mixed relay, which has also recently been added to the Olympic program. The Commonwealth Games represents another benchmark in our continued development on the road to Tokyo 2020. I have complete confidence this group will give Canadians something to cheer about at the triathlon venue.”

Victoria athletes have won two of the three medals Canada has from the Commonwealth Games with Simon Whitfield capturing men’s gold at Manchester in 2002 and Kirsten Sweetland women’s silver at Glasgow in 2014. Carol Montgomery of North Vancouver won women’s gold at Manchester 2002.

Canadian teams in other sports will name their athletes for the 2018 Commonwealth Games over the next four months.