'The whole club is super excited': Tri season to start in Covid-free Guernsey
Guernsey Triathlon will get its season underway with a super sprint event on Sunday, becoming the first club in the British Isles to resume racing.
It is splitting competitors for the event at Grandes Rocques into two waves, with a maximum of 30 athletes going off in each, released in groups of five at one-minute intervals.
"I think the whole club is super excited - we can't wait to get back to actual physical racing", Guernsey Triathlon Club president Mark Naftel told ITV News.
"All the stuff we've done over the last few months, the virtual racing, meeting up on video calls, has been really good, but you cannot beat racing out here against the elements and against each other".
Triathlon events in the UK are suspended until July at the earliest, but with no active cases of Covid-19 in Guernsey and no new cases for 36 days now, the island club has been given clearance to race.
"We've spoken to British Triathlon and they're excited for us, we've spoken to public health, they've been really helpful, and we've spoken to the Guernsey Sports Commission, also really helpful", Naftel said.
"It's going to look a little bit different but it's still going to be a proper race."
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Triathlon will be the latest sport in Guernsey to resume competitive action, following the return of cricket and cycling last weekend.
The club has made a number of changes to race rules to get the event on, with social distancing and hygiene guidelines still in place in the island.
"We're going to double our drafting distance. Normally it's five metres, but we're extending that to ten metres just to make sure that everybody is safe out on the road, and the same on the run", said Naftel.
"Our transition area is also going to be twice as big as normal for an event like this".
Around 50 athletes are expected to tackle the 400m swim, 10km bike, and 3km run on Guernsey's west coast, including a number of Island Games hopefuls.
"Grandes Rocques is pitched at the novice element, it's a really short race, and we hope we'll get a lot of novices, but we're also looking towards Island games and our top level athletes coming back for their first race of the year".
"We'll obviously keep an eye on the public health advice but hopefully we will have our second race in a few weeks time down at Vazon, and then hopefully through July and August we'll be able to get back to our proper programme".