Con testing the water on biggest stage
EVERY sport is going to look a little different in their new normal. Triathletes tend to get up close and personal with each other during races but when competitors from all over the world line up on a pontoon in Hamburg this afternoon for the ITU World Championships, it will all seem a little different.
Rather than being shoulder to shoulder, or bunched behind each other, there will be a sort of social distancing at play.
And when athletes get out of the water, their bikes are going to be spaced apart a lot more. It is just the sport’s way of adapting to life in a pandemic.
‘It is going to be a little strange but then again, the whole situation is a little strange,’ Con Doherty admits.
The Westport man is Ireland’s top-ranked male triathlete and one of seven Irish athletes who travelled to Germany last Thursday for the weekend’s events – which include individual races today and a mixed relay tomorrow.
‘This will be my first triathlon of any kind in 11 months, my first race of the season and it happens to be the World Championships. So, it’s a pretty strange situation to be in but most of the competitors will be in the same boat.’
Not that Doherty has been sitting on his hands. He used the lockdown to work on some technical issues, such as the speed in which he was taking off his wetsuit, and once the restrictions lifted, the 23-year-old University of Limerick student was found on nearby Bertra Beach, at the foot of Croagh Patrick, going through his paces with his younger brothers, Aaron and Ethan.
‘I’ve been training on Bertra Beach, which is just at the bottom of the reek. It’s unbelievable for running and for swimming. It wasn’t ideal, only being able to do open-water swimming, but I have worked on some things on my swim, hoping to pick up a bit of time in the water.
‘You can’t win a triathlon in the water, but you can lose it. If you come out of the water 30 seconds behind, it is always going to be very difficult to make up that gap.’
Doherty has been working with Chris Bryan, the former Irish open-water swimming champion, to iron out a few chinks in his handling of the water.
‘Because I do live beside the sea, and with the pool closed, I was fortunate to be able to do some open-water stuff and Chris was a great help in that regard, but for the first few months, it was all about the bike and the run, and just working on some technical stuff.’
Doherty had his first race of any kind recently in Loughrea with an open bike race. ‘I ended up in a crash,’ he sighs. ‘I came down with a few other bikes. I didn’t injure myself or anything; I think it was a case of so many competitors not racing for so long and people getting too close.’
Having been a decent crosscountry runner at school, Doherty bought a competition bike with his Confirmation money and within two years, he was in the Irish national triathlon squad. His hope was to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, although
Russell White is currently occupying the only slot for an Irish male athlete.
But given his age, Doherty should only be reaching his peak when Paris rolls around in 2024. For now though, he is concentrating on today’s World Championships and hoping to carry last year’s form – when he won a gold medal at a European Cup event in Malmö – to Hamburg and the Czech Republic next week for an ITU World Series event.
‘It is such a strange situation because nobody knows where they are or what sort of form they are in, until they hit the water. None of us know what level we are at,’ admits Doherty. ‘I know that I have trained well, but won’t know if it is a high enough level to compete with the big boys until the race itself.
‘We are all starting off [at] the same place in Hamburg. There are no formlines, you have let go of what you think you know of all the other people. We are all in the same situation.’
Sport has looked a little different in this strange time. But when Con Doherty lines up with the cream of the world’s triathletes in Hamburg today, he is determined that all those lonely runs across the strand of Bertra Beach won’t go to waste.
‘You can’t win a triathlon in the water, but you can lose it’