GEORGE GOODWIN
24, RUGBY
TOP 3 RESULTS
Ironman 70.3 Staffordshire 2019, 1st Ironman 70.3 Weymouth 2019, 1st Outlaw X 2020, 1st
George Goodwin looks younger than his 24 years, still lives at home and won’t be standing on an Olympic podium like a Brownlee or Vicky Holland. The 2020 Outlaw X winner also doesn’t hold the same place in the UK sporting consciousness. At least, not yet.
“Coming up to Outlaw, I don’t think many knew who I was,” he explains. “Even at Lanzarote last year, I asked a marshal where the pros rack and he said I didn’t look like a pro.” Goodwin shrugged it off. The 70.3 titles of Staffordshire and Weymouth were already in the bag and, with a mature head on young shoulders, he knew results and recognition would come.
Flying through a half-marathon at the 2019 Ironman 70.3 World Champs, his lack of sporting stature didn’t matter, either. “Crashed and burned” is how he describes dropping from fifth to 13th in the final kilometres, but he’d headed five-time ITU world champion Javier Gomez and 2014 Ironman world champ Sebastian Kienle long enough to make a mark, with Ali Brownlee only just up the road. “At my first pro race, I was just surviving,” he recalls of Challenge Mallorca in 2017.
“Now I’m in the race, racing world champions. It gives me confidence.”
Seeing the Brownlees in full flow in the junior duathlon championships around his local Draycote Water first sparked a 10-year-old Goodwin’s interest in multisport. Goodwin would become British and European junior duathlon champion himself, but as he moved through the age-groups at Rugby Triathlon Club, he became aware the swim would come up too short to chase Olympic glory. “I always knew,” he says. “People look at me and think, ‘He’s a good swimmer.’ But I swim 4:40mins for 400m and you need to swim 4:10mins to be at the front of ITU races. I hadn’t started swimming early enough.”
But he didn’t give up. A move to Stirling, a university picked more for the training partners than the Sports and Exercise degree, instilled the confidence to pursue his own path. Goodwin owes a debt to Marc Austin, the 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist. “I lived with him and seeing the ups and downs he went through, and how mentally tough he was, shaped how I view my training.”
Blair Cartmell, who now provides coaching guidance, was also a big influence. “I always knew my attributes were much better suited to the 4hr stuff. My threshold and peak power are the same!” Goodwin explains. The stripes were then earned at the Castle Series – “It was probably the best thing I did for preparing myself for where I’m at now. I don’t think enough people do the time.”
In lockdown he’s stayed stimulated by listening to a new album every week, ranging from the rock of Idles to the folk of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. This summer Goodwin was also back racing Brownlee again, this time at the Helvellyn Triathlon, where he put 2:30mins into Alistair on the bike before the Yorkshireman found his feet on the fells. Goodwin then proved the pick of the Brits at Outlaw X, proving too strong for veteran Tim Don in a symbolic changing of the guard.
Lessons continue to be learnt – turning up at a bitterly cold Weymouth in 2018 with just a tri-suit was rewarded with a DNF and rectified the following year – but patience is key. “You can train as hard as you like, but it takes years of consistency to manifest in performances. Elliot Smales, Tom [Davis] and I all learnt the proper way through the Castle Series before jumping into the big boys’ league of Ironman racing. Now we’re ready to push each other further.”
“Even at Lanzarote last year, I asked a marshal where the pros rack and he said I didn’t like a professional”