Worth A Try

photos by Eyes Wide Open Images

Fitness fanatics and endurance athletes who’d rather take part than watch have been coming to Noosa since its inaugural triathlon 30 years ago.

Consider Australia’s major festivals. Canberra hosts an annual spectacular called Floriade, where thousands invade the nation’s capital to look at millions of flowers. Huge crowds of revellers invade Sydney for its Gay And Lesbian Mardi Gras, again, mostly for a look. Meanwhile, Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival attracts multitudes of ticket-buyers keen to catch visiting headline acts they’ve only been able to watch on the Comedy Channel, HBO or BBC.

The Noosa Triathlon Multi Sport Festival on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast holiday strip attracts its onlookers too, but the point of difference here is that these disciples watch with butterflies in their bellies as they ponder their turn in the water, on the bike or in running shoes. Or they watch in recovery, muscles overflowing with lactic, aching all over … just how they like it.

Fitness fanatics and endurance athletes who’d rather take part than watch have been coming to Noosa since its inaugural triathlon 30 years ago. Just 180 competitors entered that year in ’83. Aussies seemed to love a beer and ciggie a lot more back then. These days, we’re educated about the health benefits of smashing kays instead of KBs, and we’re keener to work off the after-effects of our dietal vices. In 2012, the reason we’re unable to move up Noosa’s main drag no faster than a dawdling toddler is that more than 12,500 competitors have entered festival events ranging from a 1km ocean swim, to a cycling grand prix, a five-kay running dash called the “Asics Bolt”, and of course, the tri itself. In 30 years, 94,000 entries have been received – that’s a lot

of Dencorub and lost skin bark …

Inside Sport arrives on the Friday afternoon of the Festival after sharing a shuttle bus from Bris Vegas with an aspiring and “stoked to be here” women’s cycling team and a quiet and unassuming runner named Lucy. Before we’re dropped off at the Seahaven Resort at triathlon ground-zero on Hastings Street, curiosity gets the better of us, so in-turn Lucy gets standard questions expected of any uneducated outsider. What events are you in? How long are you here for? Is this your first time in Noosa? Are you here to just have fun, or win? Lucy bounces off the bus at her accommodation 1km out of town, and we wish her all the best. Nice young girl ‒ we’ll keep an eye on how she fares in her 5km road run.

We’ve arrived just in time for the first of the main events of the ‘12 festival, the 1000m Ocean Swim on Noosa’s main beach. It’s a race contested on a course the shape of a McDonald’s logo. Half an hour till showtime for the first of many, many age categories, beachgoers in their thousands are already crowding around the boxed-in start line on the water’s edge. Beginning and ending with a very short beach dash on foot, competitors swim out, swim back to the shore, then out again, before making a bee-line to the sand and instant glory among the hoards of non-competing revellers hanging from the rails of the local Surf Club.

Ky Hurst, chasing his eighth win from nine starts, leads a top-gun field of swimmers. Before today, he’d scored a silver medal at the 1998 Aquatic Worlds in the 5km Open Water event, swum for Australia at the ‘08 Olympics in the 10km marathon, and been inducted into the Surf Life Saving Australia Hall of Fame. Such a resume, though, isn’t enough to conquer the talented trio of Grimsey brothers Codie, Trent and Ridge. In a thrilling sprint finish to the line, Trent, who’s recently reset the benchmark for swimming the English Channel, is pipped at the line by Codie in 11 mins:43sec, ahead of the third-placed Hurst. “I am a gentleman at the end of the day when it comes to racing. I try and be quite discreet in what I do. If they give a little, I usually let them get away with it … Today, it was all fun and games,” offers Hurst to veteran Noosa Tri announcer Benny Pike, a boxer at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and the voice of this festival of the fit. Coulda’ fooled us, Ky.

photos by Eyes Wide Open Images

If this gig wasn’t such a big deal, there wouldn’t be tri fans, athletes and relos of competitors packed six-deep either side of the natural ramp between the water’s edge and the finish line. It’s a learned crowd being performed to. “Notice how the more elite the swimmer is, the more different their torsos are from top to bottom … to mine, anyway,” offers one sideline analyst to his grandchildren.

The power of the ocean as a talent leveller is realised when 14-year-old Queenslander Chelsea Gubecka is first home in the elite women’s race in 12:31. The state 10km Open Water champ is too classy for the likes of London Olympian Mel Gorman and Remy Fairweather, who missed 2012 Games qualification by almost nothing. Proving there’s no such thing as a fragile glamour-puss at this shindig, mega-stars like Chris McCormack, David Dellow, Caroline Steffen and Liz Blatchford join the 1000 or so ocean racers for a dip amongst the various age-groupers.

That rowdy mob at the Noosa Surf Club is well-oiled by the time the ocean swimmers start arriving for their well-earned schooners and hearty pub feasts. It’s here you’ll find the other stayers of the Noosa scenery. The visitors are easy to spot – they’re the ones wearing shoes. Not to knock the locals by any means. We look and wonder: this is a bloody surf club after all, isn’t it?

It’s not long until a celebrity cocktail-making contest breaks out. A pair of pedalling demons, Robbie McEwen and Rochelle Gilmore, is coaxed into competing. Three-time Olympian Craig Mottram, dual Olympic medallist Ken Wallace and swimsters Susie O’Neill, Jess Schipper and Bronte Barratt also demonstrate why they chose sporting pursuits over careers in drink-making. Gilmore reports that she’s never tasted alcohol in her life, which surprises the judges naught (although there are rumours they may have been fooled by a dash of chilli sauce spiked into some of the entrants’ works).

“Super Saturday” is this multi-sport festival’s ultimate crowd-pleaser. The day kicks off at the spritely time of 7.30am with the kids’ tri and later entertains the masses with product expos, clinics, a “30 years of Noosa Tri Motorcade” and elite cycling and foot races. By lunch time-ish (11.30am is close enough to beer o’clock, hey?), Noosa is flooded with skinny, trendy 2IC-looking people (the men all wearing the same just-shy-of-crew-cut haircut). Glammed-up gals are pushing young children in prams down Hastings, the kids on the promise of an ice cream if they’re good (Noosa is the capital of the world for this guilty pleasure). Singles are walking bikes (Christ knows where) like poodles, and the piles of to-be-filled empty cups on baristas’ machines are disappearing at an alarming rate.

Three-time Tour de France green jersey winner McEwen ends up winning the Subaru Cycling Grand Prix with a perfectly timed sprint after 45 minutes of racing the 1.2km circuit, then a three-lap dash for an epic finish in front of thousands of fans lining Noosa Parade. “It was so much fun. I just didn’t expect it. To get up today was even a surprise to me.” The recently retired veteran was spotted making drinks at the Surf Club last night, so decide for yourself his meaning of “get up” here … The women’s shootout turns into a tactical affair as the “Dream Team” uses its superior numbers to control the race and put Australian criterium champion Lauren Kitchen into an unbeatable position.

A half-hour later, it’s “Asics Bolt” time. Remember young Lucy? The runner who we actually asked the previous day: “How do you reckon you’ll go? Are you here to have fun, or are you going to have a serious crack at winning?” What we didn’t know was Lucy’s surname is van Dalen ‒ the same van Dalen who reached the semi-finals of the 1500m at the London Olympic Games. We wondered at her familiar, but slightly foreign accent: yep, it was a Kiwi one. We know this because we hear her voice over the PA system as she’s interviewed … after crossing the line to win the 5km Bolt, ahead of defending champ Susan Kuijken from the Netherlands and first-placed Aussie, 2012 Olympian Zoe Buckman in third. (If we ever run into van Dalen again, we’ll say we work for another sporting publication … )

Every festival like this needs a product tent. Such set-ups are usually labelled “expos” and present a chance for the bosses of specialised business to plonk themselves alongside a plethora of growing companies just like theirs. Indeed, if you’d witnessed triathlon for the first time here and wanted in, you could walk in to this festival’s temple of triathlon paraphernalia gear-naked and walk out fully equipped for action. From bikes, to gloves, to helmets, to swimming gear, if it isn’t on show in this tent, it doesn’t exist in the world of tri.

There aren’t many major sporting events across the world which start outside the now-regulation entertainment package prime time hours of 7.30pm-9.30pm – except the cricket and Bathurst. The Noosa Triathlon’s another one. Imagine our delight when the message is wired via Twitter at 6am Sunday morning that the tri is only “20 minutes away from race start” for the elitemen. Every other event over the weekend has showcased the age groups before the elites, but the triathlon this morning is returning to the sport’s roots.

Once trackside, we stand in awe, not only of the supposed billion dollars of bikes parked in transition (so that’s where everyone was walking their poodle-bikes to), but of the triathlon fraternity’s ability to party through the night, then back up at 6am to secure the best vantage points of the start of the largest Olympic-distance tri in the Southern Hemisphere (and the second-largest in the world after London’s). Rain is piercing onlookers’ special-edition tri race peaks, but no one’s moving. Inside Sport has secured an ideal vantage point just past the swim-bike transition, with a perfect view of the jumbo screen.

The race commences with a 1.5km swim lap within Noosa’s sheltered canal. The men’s and women’s elite fields resemble groups of baby penguins flapping their wings as they head towards the refuge of the sand bank. Their long-awaited appearance down the main drag for the start of the 40km bike leg creates a tremendous roar among the early revellers. The combatants won’t be seen again until they return to dump their bikes and run away into the distance. Some of them, like five-time Hawaii Ironman winner Craig Alexander, don’t return, falling victim to the now-slippery bitumen on the bike leg.

Back at the finish line, we retreat to the comfort of the USM events media centre for a bird’s-eye view of the finishing post, overlooking the main grandstand and neighbouring VIP area. First home in the rain is Warrnambool’s Peter Kerr. The Victorian reveals he was thinking of giving the game away unless some serious coin came through to make it all worthwhile.

Ashleigh Gentle is a popular winner of the women’s elite event, pushed home by the will of the appreciative crowd and ultra-enthusiastic announcer Pike. She’s a former world junior champion and has just completed her first full ITU World circuit.

The finish line tower with accompanying Avatar-blue carpet remains up for the rest of the day, as it welcomes home competitors from later-starting age groups. The fashion post-race is to leave your temporary number ID tattoo on your arm ‒ to show you’ve been part of one of the biggest participatory festival audiences in the world.

‒ James Smith