THE CURSE OF THE LAST-MINUTE CANCELLATION

Storm Babet recently wreaked havoc on the country... and Martyn Brunt’s race plans. Luckily for him, whiskey was still on offer...

- MARTYN BRUNT

Despite doing races since 2000 BC (Before Cleats) when triathletes in Speedos roamed the earth, the number of cancelled events I’ve experienced has been mercifully few.

In all the years I’ve been toiling away in the bottom half of my various age-groups, I can genuinely only think of a handful of occasions where I experienced that bittersweet moment of learning that a race isn’t going ahead. ‘Bittersweet’ because your disappointment at not being able to race is mixed with secret feelings of relief that you have a guilt-free escape from going through the agony of leaping into a cold lake and then shivering your way off on your bike.

I think that triathlon, being three sports suffers fewer cancellations than single-discipline sports because if you can’t do one part of the race, you might still be able to do the others. As such I’ve seen creative race organisers manage to cope with foggy lakes, rough seas, flooded run courses and gale-force winds by pulling a last-minute switch to aquathlons, aquabikes and duathlons out of the bag.