Super League Triathlon Jersey: Everything you need to know
Some of the best athletes in the world are in Jersey this weekend as Super League Triathlon returns to the island for a third time to kick off its 2019/20 championship season.
Winner of the women's final: Cassandre Beaugrand
RACE UPDATE: Sunday 29 September
The women's Final has been altered to a swin-run-swim-run-swim-run race due to safety reasons.
With 50mph winds hitting the course at RBC Super League Triathlon Jersey 2019, the bike section of today’s race has been cancelled.
The start time has been put back ten minutes to 2:20pm.
The men's Final has been altered to a swin-run-swim-run-swim-run-swim-run race due to safety reasons.
With 50mph winds hitting the course at RBC Super League Triathlon Jersey 2019, the bike section of today’s race has been cancelled.
The start time has been put back ten minutes to 4:20pm.
RACE UPDATE: Saturday 28 September
The bike leg of tomorrow's (Sunday 29 September) Age Group Enduro, Age Group Sprint and GO TRI races has been cancelled due to adverse weather conditions.
The races will now offer a new swim route in St Helier marina which will be followed by a two-loop 5km run.
The race meeting zone has been relocated to the Fanzone at 7:30am on Sunday.
The opener to the seven-stage series, which will straddle next year’s Olympics in Tokyo, features both current world champions and some of the biggest names in the sport in Great Britain.
Alongside the elite competition, junior and youth races will see some of Europe’s brightest up-and-coming talents tackle the same format as the pros, while amateur athletes will be competing in age-group events.
Global stars
Last year’s SLT Jersey winners Vincent Luis and Katie Zaferes - both fresh from sealing maiden world triathlon titles - headline another top-class field, which also features GB stars Jonny Brownlee and Georgia Taylor-Brown.
Seven of the world’s top 10 men and six of the top 10 women in 2019 will be on show, while Vicky Holland - the 2018 world champion - also returns for another shot at the sport’s most intense format.
South African pair Richard Murray and Henri Schoeman are two notable absentees this year, but there will be added local interest this time around.
Local talent
Jersey’s Ollie Turner and Guernsey’s Josh Lewis were both given wild cards by organisers to compete in this year’s event after an exciting summer of racing between the pair.
They were involved in a brilliant battle at the Island Games in Gibraltar, where Lewis, the new British champions who will make his SLT debut this weekend, topped the podium ahead of his island rival.
Turner, meanwhile, will race in Super League Triathlon on home soil for a second time after last year, when his performance was good enough to qualify for the whole series.
Watch: Tony Curr caught up with Josh Lewis and Ollie Turner ahead of the weekend
Pro format
This year’s elite racing takes on a slightly different shape to the previous two editions with semi-finals on Saturday dictating who will get the chance to battle for podium places on Sunday.
Day one will see 27 women (2:00pm) and 29 men (4:00pm) line-up in two heats with the top five finishers from each, and the next five fastest, going through to Sunday’s finals (2:00pm/4:00pm), all contested in SLT’s ‘Enduro’ format.
The heats, which will be drawn on Friday morning, will consist of two non-stop rotations of a 300m swim, 4km bike and 1.6km run, with the finals played out over three rounds.
Participation events
On top of the elite racing, there are also a series of participation events taking place as part of Super League Triathlon this year.
Around 1,000 people have signed up for the RBC Race for the Kids on Sunday lunchtime, a 2.5km or 5km fun run in aid of Mind Jersey.
There is also a corporate team 'enduro' on Saturday afternoon and age-group events on Sunday.
MORE INFO: Super League Triathlon Jersey 2019 schedule
Weather
Road Closures
There will be some road closures over the course of the weekend.