Bon voyage, bonne chance et chapeau

This week sees two groups of athletes and officials leaving Nova Scotia for big races whilst another set comes back from one.

Bridgetown (Aug 1) saw the final selection for the Youth team. This was composed of the winner of the points series and the winner of the Provincial Championships at B'town. These athletes travelled to Drummondville, QC, for the U13 and U15 events August 14th. These are draft-legal races and offer these young men and women the best experience possible as they climb the triathon ladder.

In the U13 Kelley Stewart was the fastest NSer in 14th place, closely followed by Eveline Choquette in 16th. Jarrod MacCullum finished in 37th place in the Boy's event. Meanwhile, in the U15, Patrick Stewart was 20th overall followed by Liam Patterson in 32nd and Raphael Choquette in 37th. In the Girls, Kali Caulier was 36th.

There are two big events this weekend. Well, three if you include Guysbrough but we know you'll all be there. For those unable to get a spot on the boat-ramp in downtown G'boro there are a couple of little events for them to have a stab at.

A large contingent is heading to the Timberman 70.3 this weekend ar Lake Winnipesaukee in NH (it's here if you didn't know, I didn't!). We count 24 (yes 24); Karalyn Burke, John Burke, Greg Burrows, Mary Cantrell, David Carrigan, Patricia Carrigan, Anthony Corbin, Johnny Miles organiser Terry Curley, Carol Curley, Ken Dufour, Wendy Foote, Andrea Haughan, Edward Haughan, Adam Jones, Gregg Kerr, Paul MacDonald, Colin Piercy, Betty Pound, Kathy Saulnier, Cory Tetford, Keith Toon, Kevin Walsh, Lisa Wilson and Terry Worthern. If you regularly work out at the Y in New Glasgow, this will be a good weekend to get a machine as we know there's a huge bunch of guys from NG going down. Caveat emptor however; that list was parsed from the official website and as anyone knows who's searched for "NS" on an IM site, New South Wales comes up a lot too. We recognise many of these names, but if any are from our antipodean cousins well G'day and Good Luck to you too.

Also, Nationals is in Kelowna this weekend. Olympic distance provincial champion Brad Piggeau together with brother Matt and last year's Olympic distance provincial champion Ryan MacDonald will be on the start-pontoon together with, among others Whitfield S, CAN. We're sure none of them will be too star-struck, well not after they've seen Simon sleep through the pre-race meeting on Friday.

We just got Ryan's skin-suit back from the printers and it looks pretty sharp;

We particularly like the way it says "MacDonald Can". Inspirational words indeed, almost better than that "Ride it like you stole it" sticker we saw at Magog!

Kevin Piggot, accompanying Brad and Matt, will take on the Olympic seeing as he's out there already.

Speaking of pre-race meetings, Nova Scotia will also be represented on the start pontoon by Team Leader Jason Murphy (essentially in charge of making sure everything looks "just so") and Marie-Claude Gregoire who will be taking the NTO course on offer at Kelowna this year and who's duties will be many and varied but at some point we know it will involve Jason Murphy, 100m of TriCan scrim and 500 zip-ties. Hey, the glamour-jobs!

Good luck all, and we'll see the rest of you on the Guysborough boat-ramp on Sunday morning...

AD