Hayden Squance, Wayne Leighton and Jon Linyard had a high-speed hit-out for upcoming national champs when they competed in the Tineli Team Triathlon at Rabbit Island on Sunday.
Hayden and John teamed up with Matt Newberry to win the event that required each team member to swim 250m, cycle 6km and run 2km before tagging a team-mate and sending them off on the next leg of the relay.
Team Sitting on 99 finished in 1hr 28min 10sec with Hayden recording the fastest time of the day, finishing in 26min 33sec.
Hayden heads to Gisborne for the Oceania Junior triathlon sprint champs this weekend while Jon is preparing for Xterra Rotorua on April 16.
Wayne Leighton, who teamed-up with Mandy Medcalf-Stephens and PJ Stephens to finish sixth, is also heading to Rotorua for Xterra.
Alan Bryson, who teamed up with Neil Green and Eileen Searle in the cleverly named A n E team to finish second and win the mixed category in 1hr 41min 3sec, is also training for a big race with Ironman Australia on May 1 as his target. Alan had a busy day on Sunday, double-teaming with Thomas Heaton and Emma Charles in Team CAB to finish fourth.
A nationally-ranked swimmer, Thomas showed he also could be a pretty useful triathlete, recording the day’s second-fastest leg of 29min 24sec. Thomas made a big impression earlier in the week when he won the senior boys race at the secondary school’s Andrew Jones Memorial Triathlon at Rabbit Island. Garin College’s Olivia Wilbourne, Sophia
Kersten and Hannah Price won the female section, while Carolyn Squance, Peter Gibbs and Rob Rix won the senior section for teams with a combined age of 170-plus. At the other end of the demographic, Team RWCA’s Nic Hall, Gianni Pessione and Oxford Bayley won the junior category. Thirty-one teams and 92 athletes competed in the event sponsored by Tineli and Kiwi Multisport.
