Cameron Good – Rising Olympic Distance Triathlon Star

I was at Nowra in January competing in the Elite Energy triseries and was approached by Gunter Hermann of Skinfit who told me about one of the Skinfit athletes who had just won Devonport that morning. At Trizone as well as talking to and following the top guys and girls in the sport we like to talk to the up and coming triathletes and inform Trizone’s readers about the next generation and give these young guys and girls some media exposure that they generally don’t receive.

With Gunter’s prompting I spoke to up and coming ITU triathlete Cameron Good the week after his win in Devonport to find out a bit more about who he is and also to see what his plans are for 2011.

Since Devonport Cameron has achieved a couple of very good results against some top competition at Geelong and most recently in New Zealand where he placed fourth overall in the ITU Oceania Cup race only 49 seconds behind New Zealand’s Kris Gemmell who is one of the leading ITU world championship series traithletes. Gemmell also won the 2011 Singapore 70.3 triathlon on March 20 beating Pete Jacobs and James Cunnama.

Cameron has been doing triathlons for 5 years now after starting at 19. Until that point he had been playing soccer and only participating in school sports. He had watched triathlons on TV and a friend from soccer convinced him to do one of the Warringah Triathlon Club’s triathlons.

After a few triathlons Cameron started to get post some good results and took the next step of racing in the junior elite series with some races at Kurnell and in the Pro Tour. His swim was still a bit off though. “I went down to NSWIS in Wollongong and spent a couple of years under Jamie Turner. This really sorted my swimming out. It really set me on the right course”.

After two years in Wollongong at NSWIS it was time to move back to Sydney for Cameron. “The two years down there were great but I needed to go out on my own. I had spent some time in France racing for the Versailles triathlon club. We competed in a 5 race series which was a team orientated race. There were essentially 3 top team members who got through in each race. It wasn’t necessarily the same three each time. It depended on who was racing, who was in form that race and what type of course it was. The racing was fast and furious and it was a lot of fun to be involved in a team in what is essentially an individual sport”. The athletes are really looked after well by these clubs and it is a great way for the young up and coming triathletes to get a taste of what is to come.

Cameron then raced some ITU Pan American, European and Asian Cup races with his best result being a second at Sedai Bay in Japan.

Towards the end of 2010 Cameron found he did not have any structure to his training and racing after leaving NSWIS. He felt he was over trained and in need of a new direction. This has come in the form of Pete Jacobs (top 10 at Hawaii ironman 2009 and 2010) of born2run and Grant Giles of Aeromax Team. Pete lives locally to Cameron and has been mentoring Cameron recently. “I have been training with Pete recently and he has brought some sense in to what I am doing. He isn’t coaching me but just giving me the advice that I needed from someone more experienced. I recently spent a couple of weeks with Grant Giles and he has helped me plan what I am going to be doing and given some real structure to my training. Back in Sydney I am training with Ben Hammond, Pete and John Marsh. These guys are a pretty handy bunch and it has really helped me. I think Devonport showed how much it is helping”.

At Devonport in January Cameron won the ITU race. He had been unsure of how he would perform against many of Australia’s other bright young stars. He then backed up in Geelong a few weeks later with an outstanding performance against the hottest short course field assembled in Australia for a long time. Almost every sprint and Olympic distance open triathlete in Australia was there and Cameron placed 5th overall out of an open field of 34 with a time just over 30 seconds behind Brad Khalefeldt. The main difference in this race was not the speed over each leg but the speed in transition. “I was with the front guys coming out of the water but a slightly slower T1 saw me behind them on the bike until the chase pack caught me and we worked together to catch the front guys. This deficit meant that I had to work harder to get back to the front. T2 was faster but once again I lost a little bit of ground on the first four guys and after working a bit harder on the bike than them just couldn’t bridge the gap.” This result shows what a hot prospect Cameron is and also highlights that there is only a couple of small areas that he has to work on. Wellington was a much different outcome as Cameron stayed with the lead guys throughout the race. Obviously transition is getting better.

The race for the spots available on the London 2012 Olympic team is going to be hotly contested by a number of Australia’s fastest short course triathletes and Cameron has to be right in the mix at this stage.

Cameron’s next race is Mooloolaba this weekend. He has received a start in the ITU World Cup race. With these recent results he has proven that he is faster then many racing this weekend so it will be great to see him amongst the elite field.