David Mainwaring and Andrea Oracki win RMB Lawyers Wollongong Olympic Distance Triathlon

The RMB Lawyers trithegong put on by Elite Energy continues to grow in leaps and bounds. With almost 2000 athletes racing over the weekend this event is growing in to one of the better races in Australia. Sunday’s events saw the Olympic and Sprint Distance triathlons raced in almost perfect weather, with record numbers of triathletes.

The main race of the day was the NSW round of the Australian qualifying series for the Olympic distance world champs London team. David Mainwaring and Andrea Oracki took out the men’s and women’s open wins.

Mainwaring was chasing on the bike from the start and watched as Lindsey Wall pulled away. “During the swim Baldacchino (Patrick) and Wall got away from me and had about 35sec lead coming out of the water. Wall went quite hard on the bike and put some time into me especially on the first lap.”

Mainwaring caught and passed Baldacchino on the first lap. Baldacchino is on the comeback trail after many years out of the sport focusing on his career. This was his 3rd race back and while his bike is not quite there yet it is coming on strongly. Even though Mainwaring lost some time to Wall during the bike he didn’t feel like things weren’t under his control. “The bike was fast but I felt in control and pretty confident coming into transition about 1min 20 down on Lindsey.”

“I got off the bike and my legs felt quite good so I worked on catching Lindsey which I eventually did at around the 5km mark. My run felt really strong as I have been training for 70.3s and was quite surprised with my run time as it felt quite comfortable the whole way.”

Lindsey Wall was second overall with Patrick Baldacchino taking the final podium spot.

Right behind these three open males were a host of very fast age groupers. If Wollongong’s Scott Ashcroft could find another couple of minutes in the swim he will be very dangerous. After missing the Huskisson Long Course due to an infection he was pumped to race in his home town. He rode and ran extremely well for fourth overall.

Former Croatian Olympic slalom canoer Emir Mujcinovic had a great battle with Ashcroft for the 30-34 title. After getting the jump on Ashcroft in the swim Mujcinovic then lost some ground on the bike before getting back to within twenty seconds at the end of the race with a very quick 36:10 run.

AP10’s Alex Price was 6th overall off the back of a very big block of Ironman training. The NSWIS triathlon physio heads to Melbourne next week to once again take on an Ironman. Expect to see him laying down at the finishline in a comatose state at about 4pm on Sunday week. Price never leaves any shred of his race out on the course.

Special mention to Dean Degan. The 40-44 age group winner ran the second fastest 10kms of the day. A 34:38 thank you very much. Also young Cameron Roberts showed his talents with a 1:58 Olympic distance time. Brad Kahlefledt’s brother Jared took the journey once again from Wagga Wagga to the coast to show that the genes were just handed out to his brother. Jared has been on the podium a lot this season.

In the women’s race Andrea Oracki lead from start to finish. Last year only Michelle Wu raced open. This year there were three open females. Young Tarni Cunningham from Berry stepped up to the Olympic distance. Coached by former TA high performance manager Rob Pickard, Cunningham has been stepping up her triathlon racing this season. She raced the Oceania Sprint Distance Triathlon Championship in Devonport recently. Oracki was never pushed and crusied to victory.

Andrea Oracki recently finished 4th female overall at the Huskisson Long Course with a time of 4:11. She ran a 1:21 for the 20kms at Husky with the bike being where she lost most of her time to eventual winner Liz Blatchford. She has a solid future ahead in triathlon.

However between Oracki and Cunningham in the overall results were some very fast age group women. Balmoral Triathlon Club’s Hanna Donaldson has been slowly building herself up through the club and showed her potential by finishing second overall in Wollongong.

Another two minutes behind Donaldson was Patricia McKibbin who finished third overall and second in her age group. It is pretty tough when you are third overall in a race with an open category and get second in your age group. Fourth overall was Carrie Barrett with wife of aforementioned Dean Degan, Julia Degan coming in fifth overall.