1 Review

1. Perfectly organized but unfortunate circumstances at the aquabike race

   This review was submitted for Neufeld Triathlon 2022

   Year of participation: 2022   I participated in Aquabike

   The Neufeld Triathlon is basically my home event and I raced the full triathlon quite a few times. They have an aquabike option since 2021. But since I got sick on raceday last year, this was my first participation in the aquabike race in Neufeld.

   In 2022 there was a new bike course for the Olympic Distance and Aquabike race. It´s now a one lap bike course with a few technical sections. The reason was to get all athletes over the railway crossing as quick as possible – you now cross it only once at the beginning of the bike leg – to avoid athletes being stopped by the railway. Also the traffic around the Neufeldersee can be quite busy when the weather is sunny (and it always has been in the last years). So it´s certainly another advantage that you don´t have to pass the lake area after lap one. However – you cannot avoid that traffic can be an issue for some athletes. But luckily I have to say for me it never really was in all the years that I raced there.

   The swim in the Neufeldersee is really nice. The water is clear and usually quiet. It´s a two lap swim with aussie exit. This might not be everybody preferrence, but I rally don´t mind.

   Transition zone is also always set up perfectly. This year athletes could choose thier preferred spot themselves. This is actually not bad, but I would prefer to have all aquabike athletes in one spot. So you can see how many of your competitors have been here before you 😉

   Unfortunately there has been some confusion about the finishline – which certainly wasn´t the organizers fault. Because he communicated correctly that the finish is at the triathlon finishline. And that´s what I thought before the race. So after checkin I asked a TO, which way I have to run from T2 to the finishline. He said that it doesn´t matter, because the finishtime will be taken at the entrance to T2 and then I can just walk to the finishline whatever way I like. At the race briefing the race organizer said, which way the aquabike athletes have to run to the finishline. I wanted to double check, but couldn´t find him anymore. So I asked to other TOs. They said, yes, we have to run/walk to the finishline that way, but this is only to get to the finisher´s area (to get the medal, eat, drink,…) and the finishtime will be taken at T2 entry. Well, what can I say. After the finish I learned that the TOs where wrong – and I haven´t been the only athlete who was musguided. If you check the time from T2 entry to the finish in the official results, you can see that four of the first five athletes obviously haven´t been in a hurry to get to the finishline.

   There was another unfortunate coincidence that was certainly nobody´s fault. On the last two to three kilometers of the race I came close to another athlete who didn´t have a bib number. If I had pushed it a little harder, I certainly could have overtaken him. But I thought “OK, chances really aren´t very high that he´s an aqubike athlete” – because there were obviously much more triathletes in the race. Well – I was taught better, when he got off the bike and slowly walked into the transition area. In the first moment I was a bit angry and asked him in a bit of a rude tone where his bib number his. He somehow lost it during the ride. Not his fault and of course I apologized immediately. But obviously eh also thought the race is finished already. So we hung our bikes stressfree and then walked to the finishline together. It wasn´t before halfway to the finishline when the race organizer cheered for us when we started to jog to the finishline. A few seconds behind another athlete. So I hope in the future that TOs get informed a bit better about the rules of the race they supervise.

   It was also quite unfortunate, that the well deserved winner of the race had to be disqualified. The reason: He started together with the triathletes – five minutes earlier than the other aquabikers. So he could potentially benefit from drafting triathletes (since the field of triathletes is much bigger than the few aqubikers) and also didn´t have to find his way through the slow swimming triathletes as the other aquabikers had to. But he was six minutes faster than the second fastest aquabike athlete that day and this is certainly more than the advantage he could gain from starting with the triathletes. Since the athlete came from Slovakia he might wasn´t ablue to understand the race briefing in German. But it was well communicated before the race, that quabikers start five minutes after the triathletes. So I guess there wasn´t really another choice than to disqualify him. But from a sporting perspective he certainly would have deserved the win of the race.

   However, if you leave aside those unfortunate circumstances that most likely won´t happen again, the Neufeld Triathlon is a great event, well organized, at a beautiful race venue. I´ll be back 😉

   Overall rating

   Organisation

   The Swim

   Transition

   Bike Course

   Finishline Experience

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