World Sprint Triathlon Championships, 14 Jul 2023

This was my second Age-Group World Championships and lived up to the electric atmosphere of last year's. The city was the perfect location for a race like this; canal swim, flat bike and path run with a huge expo centre and seemingly the whole of Hamburg volunteering to help run the event.

Coming into the race I was worried about my Achilles tendinitis and an unorthodox taper, but was hoping to improve on my standing of 10th U20 from last year. I finished 11th disappointingly but had a far better race technically amongst a higher-calibre field. I got a good inside line on the swim, but ended up leading a chase pack instead of sitting on someone's feet as I'd hoped. The final few 200m included a swim through an unlit tunnel, which made me feel like I was swimming in a tank blindfolded and put me into a hyper-focused mind, it was great.

The transition was strung out in one line along a boulevard and despite including about 800m of running was unproblematic. A pack of about 8 quickly formed on the bike and after some efforts I decided to try to form a breakaway on the second lap on the 1 or 2% "hill" on the course. Circumstances meant I went out early with a couple of others who had done some solid shifts on the front. After about a minute with them, then a minute solo I was engulfed back by the pack where I remained for the rest of the bike.

I left T2 and headed out on the run along the reservoir with my normal aim of overtaking people and not letting anyone overtake me. With 4 months of no run training I was pretty pleased to be heading down the blue carpet at the end having done this, but I was definitely losing ground and if the run had been longer, then the results could've been very different.

Ophelia Vesely