A fitting tribute issue this

month to everyone’s favourite curly-haired hero, Tim Don. In the week leading up to this year’s Ironman Worlds he was hit by a car, resulting in a fractured spine and instant withdrawal from what could’ve been a stellar race.

Back in this issue in 2003, he’d just won the World Duathlon Champs and was loving life out in Stellenbosch, South Africa: “I live halfway up a mountain and my cellar’s full of the finest wines – the majority from the vineyard 50 yards down the road. I’m a lucky boy.”

The interview also touched on British Triathlon’s revered World Class Performance Programme, with Don wisely surmising: “It’s simply frightening to think how good the current juniors on the programme will be in five or six years. They’ll raise the sport to a whole new level.” Three years later, Alistair Brownlee would win the World Junior Champs. The rest, well, you know…

Elsewhere in the issue, London Tri announced that it would be expanding to two days that year following a high demand for places; there’s advice on how to ‘bunny hop’ on your bike; and reports from Powerman UK, Ironman Australia and the ITU World Cup Japan, where GB’s Michelle Dillon finished third. A year later, she would go on to finish sixth at the Athens Olympics.

“Don wisely surmised that GB’s ‘current juniors will raise the sport to a whole new level’”