1986 Avignon Triathlon
“I don’t like running.” Curious quote from a triathlete who has just run 21km at 17 km/hr with a sprint over the last 300 m to win a world class event. Mark Allen is tongue-tied and slurping on a drink as he walks like a puppet around the transition area.
“I don’t like running so fast.” He says later on the massage table. To make his earlier point more clear. “That was probably the hardest run test of my career.” Three camp beds away Scott Tinley is slumped on his stomach. Arms dangling. And face stuck to the canvas that smells of massage ointment.
Tinley seems to be sleeping. Mark Allen and Scott Tinley raced together the whole day. And even now, after an impossibly hard race finale, they’re side by side. Both suffering from painful cramping.
They don’t do race reports like that anymore.
Images: Tri-Athlete (FR) Mars-Avril 1986
I’ve already written about the 1985 Avignon Triathlon. So here’s the 1986 race. There was substantial prize money. 150,000 FF. About €23,000. Put up by the event sponsors Quick. A kind of French Wimpy. I also like how they describe the distance as “Half Hawaii”.
The event was also now part of the re-vamped French Championships Series. Unlike in 1984. 20 races. And 1985. 12 races. The 1986 French Championships now had over 50 counting races. Yes. More than one very weekend. This required a complicated points system. Involving coefficients based on the number of finishers a race has and the strength of the field.
This system wasn’t reformed until 1990. And probably caused plenty of over-racing by the top French athletes. And subsequently getting poorer results in international competitions than they probably deserved.
The Americans were back. Allen, Tinley and Moss. Along with some tasty Germans. Aschmoneit, Morath, Blaschke and Schuler. The Belgians. Meeuws, Huys and Paulus. The established French talents. Lagarde, Reuze, Capogna, Cordier, Cauchois and Belaubre. And the up and comers. Roland Bertrand. Rodolphe Retrain. Dany Foucault and Philippe Methion. We also shouldn’t forget Kevin O’Neill, the British pioneer of the French scene.
There’s another swim kerfuffle. Like in 1985. Lock gates are opened just as the race starts. And although there’s only 100m upstream to be swum. Most of the 600 athletes can’t make it. So they’re fished out. And the race is started 5 minutes later. Only 1000m and all downstream now.
Probably the top swimmer, Yves Cordier, misses the start and then abandons early in the bike with back pain. There’s a bit of drafting. Age group men mixing with elite women. And Lydie Reuze gets disqualified. After leading into T2. This allows Julie Moss to win again in Avignon.
Allen and Tinley are off the bike together. On the run they hear that Aschmoneit is at 8 minutes. So it’s just them going toe to toe for the win. Again. The pace keeps increasing until the last 300m. With a sharp downhill. Allen sprints hard and takes it. Tinley finishes 1 second later. Very disappointed. The 1985 positions are reversed.
The article finishes by trying to analyse why the Americains are better. It’s not that they’ve been in the sport longer. Or where they’re from. or their professionalism. It’s about the extraordinary chance that 4 talented athletes like Scott Molina, Dave Scott, Scott Tinley and Mark Allen fell into the sport of triathlon. I wrote a bit about that here.
Images:
Tri-Athlete (FR) Juin 1986
