Welcome to the club's history section. Below you can find some annual reports on what happened with the club in previous years. If you have any additional information you'd like to contribute, please get in touch with it!
2007-8 It has been another amazing year for the Oxford University Triathlon Club. Membership continues to thrive – there are currently over 70 members of OUTriC ranging from novices to national level athletes. A key highlight was the promotion of the Men’s team to Discretionary Full Blue status, and it is hoped that the Women’s team will follow suit in 2008/09. Building on the strengths of last season, Oxford continued to have excellent representation at national events: the club had 13 entrants for the (pilot) BUSA Duathlon in November; 20 entrants for the BUSA Sprint Triathlon in May; and 43 entrants for the Varsity Triathlon in June.
OUTriC posted some impressive results at the BUSA Duathlon, including a first place finish by Katy Moore in the women’s division. At the BUSA Sprint Triathlon a team of our fastest two men and women on the day placed 4^th overall, an excellent performance considering Oxford comfortably beat Cambridge and were the fastest team not to receive external funding as a centre of sporting excellence.
The 2008 Varsity Triathlon was again held in the grounds of the beautiful Blenheim Palace. OUTriC were confident that we had the strength and the depth to contend for both trophies this year. As in 2007, the Oxford women were unstoppable and retained the women’s trophy by a comfortable margin. The Oxford men pushed themselves to their personal limits but came up short against an exceptionally strong Cambridge team, whose results were buoyed by the performance of one elite national triathlete.
OUTriC looks forward to further impressive results during the summer racing season, including the inaugural BUSA Olympic Triathlon on 13^th July 2008.
2006-7
The club continues to expand, with now over 200 people on our mailing list.
2005-6
The triathlon club continued to grow successfully in 2005-6, its fifth year. We doubled our membership and increased our club turnout at BUSA, Varsity and major national events. The club was awarded half-blue status for both men and women, reflecting its continuing growth and success.
2004-5 This was the year to decide the status of the club. Half-blue status can only be awarded to a club after it has competed in three varsity matches. The new president, Zaheer Cader, made sure that we had not just our third varsity match this year but for the first time trophies for the winning teams (sponsored by triandrun) as well as a large contingent down at BUSA. He also organised the first ever triathlon cuppers (in reality an aquathlon) and moreover had a brilliant cuppers trophy and medals fashioned just in time as part of the triandrun club sponsorship deal. The cuppers were reasonably well attended and were won by Worcester. The end result was a very popular club and for the first time a victory in Varsity, thanks to our women, especially Canadian rowing olympian Buffy Williams, Rachel Hughes and Nerys Hughes who made up the winning team. The victory launched a thousand hangovers - well at least one from James anyway - and proved that there is more than just a lot of enthusiasm in our club. Zaheer also tried to organise an open water swim varsity match at the inaugural Blenheim triathlon but the Cambridge team did not turn up. His organisational achievements were however recognised by the university who granted the club for the first time Half Blue status.
Training reached new heights, with swim sessions now coached by our in-house qualified coach Kelly Thornber, weekly track and turbo sessions and an ambitious training camp in cycling heaven (ie. Majorca) organised by Paul Petzschmann during the Easter vacation.
It was a year full of highlights, including a first place by Thom Ringer in his age group at the Thruxton duathlon in the October 2004 and a fine performance from the OUTriC team at the Big Half in June 2005, finishing in second place. Fresh from the Big Half, James Nichols competed in Ironman Switzerland, completing the course in a bit over 13 hours. Derek Li competed in the Asian Triathlon Championships held in Singapore on 3 July 2005, where he completed the olympic distance course in 2:28:55, finishing 5th in his age group. This however was not good enough, so he then went on to compete in the olympic distance Port Dickson Int'l Triathlon in Malaysia, finishing in an amazing time of 2:07:55, and 13th in his age group. There were fine performances also in the London triathlon, especially by Luke Walton (2:17:12), Geoff Roberts (2:25:08) and the new president Simon MacDonald (2:27:04). Another great result was Kirsty's top female finish at the hair-raising Helvellyn triathlon and her qualification for the World Duathlon Championships in Australia.
2003-4
Next president was David Gillett. Pippa Whitehouse, a DPhil student and an international orienteer (among much else), was now coaching the swims. Thom Ringer, a Canadian international age grouper, joined the club and helped with ideas for the training sessions.
Richard Oram, Caroline Furness and Tom Lawton went to Melbourne on some kind of exchange programme that year and had the opportunity to train through the winter with Tom Rickard. Richard emailed to say: "I am having an awesome time here in Oz, enjoying the summer sun in Melbourne. I have hookied up with tommy R's training group. We have a regular bay swim at 6.30 on tuesdays, a 14ft shark was seen in the bay the week before I arrived, this is one hell of an incentive not to get dropped by the bunch! Tom has a hip injury but is swimming about 6K a day to make up for it. The cycling is great, i have borrowed a bike off a friend - it is a De Rosa that he bought of Phil Liggett about 6 years ago! The squad does a 215K beach road ride every saturday morning (!!), I have been busy the last two weekends and have not managed to make it (thank god!), I may try it this weekend....not sure the legs will survive..."
So not everyone was taking it easy back then.
Competition-wise, BUSA participation reached an all time low after another mixup with entry forms meant that few people competed. Richard Oram was among the top finishers in the men and Tamsyn Allen in the women. Richard and Thom were then off to the ITU World Triathlon Championships in Madeira. It was an unlucky venture for Richard who collided with a car while training and was taken to hospital with a broken leg. Thom competed for Canada and finished the tough course in 2:25:17 (46th/63). Varsity was once again well attended, even by Richard who came to watch, supported by crutches. The fun varsity atmosphere at Bedford was somewhat offset by losing to Cambridge in both the male and female categories.
After another year at the top, Kirsty retired from the Chelsea football team, started a DPhil and concentrated more on duathlons and triathlons, regularly finishing near the top in races and finishing Half Ironman UK in the summer of 2004. Paul Petzschmann competed in the Big Half in Trentham (half-ironman distance) and later in Ironman Germany. A number of OUTriC warriors competed in the London triathlon, with Clare Warren first out on the swim. One of the highlights of the season was the 9-up team trial trial at the airport in Weston on the Green. An impromptu team of 9 triathletes was put together but only 7 turned up at the start (blame illness and injury). This small matter did nothing to dampen the fighting spirit of the OUTriC team, who rode aggressively to finish the 10 miles in a respectable time of 26 min.
2001-3
After Paul Ganter's initial stewardship (2001-2002), the presidency of the club went to John Coats, who arranged the first Varsity match. Also during his time in 2002-2003 the first BUSA triathlon match was held on the route of the Springfield Triathlon, in Corsham. Due to lack of organisation on behalf of the BUSA organisers (two different entry forms were in circulation, only one of which was valid) and a shortage of places (only 100 places were available), John and several others were left out. There was nevertheless a sizeable party from Oxford with over a dozen dark blue warriors competing, including Richard Oram, a budding international age grouper who finished 10th overall. The Oxford Uni teams did well, finishing 5th overall. Richard Oram went to compete at the age group level in the ITU World Triathlon Championships in Tenerife two weeks later. John Coats eventually competed in the Varsity match at Mansfield at the end of June and did the best time that day among the Oxford men - but the somewhat depleted Oxford teams were thrashed, not least by the participation of Rachel Horn in the Cambridge Women's team. Rachel, an international age grouper, destroyed the women's field finishing first overall, even ahead of all the Oxford men.
Training had changed in focus towards shorter distance events this year and John ran the cycling and track training sessions for the club. Sessions included a turbo training session during the winter, as the club had now acquired 4 turbo trainers. The swim sessions were taken over by two swim specialists and members of OUSC: Fiona Edmonds and Clare Warren. On that year, Kirsty Hewitson joined the club. Kirsty was finishing her first degree in Chemistry and was the captain of the Women's Chelsea Football team, England champions that year.
2000
Though the origins of triathlon go back beyond the mists of Hawaii, the origins of the Oxford University triathlon club can be with some certainty placed in the not so distant mists of the year 2000.
Firstly I can't actually remember how we changed the name of the club -Oxford student triathlon club versus OUTriC (as i seem to have lots ofparaphernalia regarding both names), but i know we started with the former.
Anyway here goes for the origins:
The origins of the club officially started in Michaelmas 2000 when Chris Bucknall and James Carver (Jesus) separately had the idea of getting Oxford University into Triathlons (Cambridge started in 1999). After some confusion the sports department realised two people were trying to do the same thing at the same time and helped them join forces. Initially the club was called the Oxford Student Triathlon club, because of some conflict with the Real Tennis club (OUTC), before changing later.
Some well placed posters with the snazzy logo soon got membership up and running and allowed the club to be offically
recognised as part of the University in early 2001. Membership was a yearly cost of £5, with the first members including the Canadian Murray McCutcheon (Trinity) - the clubs first offical President , Paul Petzschman (St Anthony's), Roberta Dionello (Hertford) and Paul Ganter (Magdalen) chaperoned by an Australian legend known as Tom Rickards, who did informal
training in the pool. Tom had been competing at an international level as an age grouper since 1997, and has gone on to come 1st in his age group (30-34) at the first ever half iron man competition in Snowdonia 2001, and then finishing 2nd in his age group at the Kona ironman in 2002. Murray (http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~murray/) also continued to perform at a very high level in various ironman competitions. More recently Roberta (http://www.back2best.com/Roberta.html) has taken on GB status. The rest of the group continue to do triathlons into their old(er) age, but with less impressive times!
With limited membership the club ended its year with less than £100 in the bank and didn't even have an annual dinner (shocker!), but the key was the club was up and running and the long wait for Blue status could commence. As James and Chris were both in their final years they handed over to Paul Ganter, who then took on our new stall at the Freshers fair for the first time in 2001.
The major inspiration behind the origin of the club was Australian triathlete Tom Rickards, who was in Oxford at the time. Tom had been competing at an international level as an age grouper since 1997. While in Oxford, Tom guided the training of an informal group of triathletes that included DPhil student Paul Ganter (Magdalen College). The club was officially set up in 2001 and Paul Petzschmann was one of its members that first year. According to Paul P., Paul Ganter had pretty much singlehandedly set up the club, taking out an entire year of his DPhil in 2000/2001 for arranging all the admin. He then set up a registration website in the Spring of 2001 where one was able to register their interest in the club and at the Fresher's Fair in October 2001 there was a stall for the first time.
The year started well for OUTriC. In September 2001 Tom had qualified for the World Ironman Champs by competing in the first ever Half Ironman in the UK in Snowdonia, where he finished in 4th place. He went on to finish second in his age group in the Ironman in Kona in 2002.
As for training, Paul Ganter ran all the training sessions - there was one almost everyday with swimming at Temple Cowley Pool on Friday nights. On Saturday the triathletes rode together with Tom Rickards and Paul and some people from the cycling club (OUCC) in the so-called "slow group" with a mix of people from the Oxford City Road Club and even the occasional pros who were training in Britain during the winter and who Tom brought along. There was also a running workshop every week because Paul's background was in athletics and tales of old say he knew a great deal about sports physiology and he was also doing research in the field.
There weren't any organised competitions at the time, neither Varsity nor BUSA. The club just picked a race and went down in Paul's big Passat with people's bikes in the back. The first ever OUTriC training camp took place in Wales in July 2002, and was pretty crazy as Paul Petzschmann explained: 'Yeah, Ganter was pretty crazy. We stayed at big Tom's house at the coast near Holyhead with an open-water swim, a long ride and a run every single day which was extremely hard. On the way back I remember stopping in Caernarfon where we cycled the entire course of the 1st British Half-Ironman (45k) and after that we jumped into the lake with our cycling gear and swam across and back. Totally mad.
Manage