Quest for ‘ultimate athlete’ motivates Charles-Barclay
Ironman champion will face stiff competition in Singapore leg of the T100 Triathlon World Tour
Lucy Charles-Barclay lines up in Singapore this weekend for the second leg of the T100 Triathlon World Tour, saying the series winner could rightly be considered the world’s ultimate athlete.
The Ironman world champion will race alongside the likes of Ashleigh Gentle and India Lee on Saturday, while Daniela Ryft, considered one of the best triathletes of all time, and Olympic champion Flora Duffy are also part of the tour.
Gentle goes into the event as defending champion, having won the Asian Open under the shadow of Marina Bay Sands last year, while Lee pipped her fellow Briton Charles-Barclay to gold at the Miami T100 last month.
“I think whoever wins the title at the end of the year could definitely win the title of ultimate athlete,” Charles-Barclay said. “You’re racing the top 20 women to get this prize. So you have got to be the best athlete.
“It’s definitely going to be quite an elusive world title, I think. And everyone on the start line is going to be hungry for it.”
The race this weekend will just be Charles-Barclay’s second at the 100km distance, with the 30-yearold seeking a new challenge for the year after finally conquering the Ironman in Kona, Hawaii last October, having finished second four times.
Her decision not to defend her title this year and switch to the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) provoked a furious backlash from some within a sport the Briton said was “still very opinionated”. Not that it was an easy decision, and CharlesBarclay said lots of thought had gone into what she wanted her year to look like.
“We discussed it with the team and I think ultimately it was what is going to excite me most to get out of bed at 5 in the morning and train,” she said. “And this was the thing that I felt like it was new, it was different, it was exciting, and I had been pursuing the ultimate goal [being world champion] for such a long time. And I feel like I just did it [won Kona] and now I want something else to chase.”
Which raises questions over any renewed Olympic ambitions, given that in a previous incarnation Charles-Barclay was a swimmer with hopes of making the Great Britain squad for the 2012 Games in London.
While acknowledging that competing at the Olympics had always been a dream, CharlesBarclay said she was ultimately attracted by the excitement that had begun to build around the PTO. “One of my favourite years in the sport was back in 2021, where I decided to race over nearly every different distance of triathlon,” she said.
“And I felt like this year I kind of wanted to challenge myself in a new way. Doing this series, I’ve got to be faster. It’s more aggressive racing. There’s less time for error. You’ve got to be smart at the races, all of those things. I felt that it was going to challenge me and allow me to grow as an athlete.”
Charles-Barclay was also attracted by the potential for growth of triathlon. With almost 500,000 followers on Instagram, and another 100,000 on YouTube, she knows something about providing compelling content, and said there was no reason her sport could not enter the mainstream.
“I’d love to see it be one of the Netflix series, like in tennis, golf or rugby.”