Sunday, April 20, 2008

Interview: Belinda Granger

There's just a few hours left at Ironman China, so given that it looks like Belinda Granger may take the win (and hopefully my wife and Belinda's TeamTBB teammate Donna Phelan will continue the good TeamTBB juju given that she's in third at the moment), I thought I'd post a video that you'll see in the video clips at right.

The video was taken a couple weeks ago when I spent a week visiting Donna and the rest of the team in Subic Bay, Philippines. I'll be updating the blog in a bit with the story of how this team has been simply kicking ass this year. I've been to triathlon camps like I'm sure you have, but there is NOTHING like this.

Belinda's race has not been a surprise, after seeing her training that week. On the weekend, TeamTBB's stud swimmer, Mathieu O'Halloran, Granger, Phelan and Nicola Spirig took part in the Terry Larrazabal sprint Triathlon just outside Subic. It was Belinda first, and granted, it was a sprint, I'd never seen her turn her legs over like that. So her race in China is no surprise to me. Come Kona, she's a threat to move a few steps up the Top 10 podium closer to Chrissie.

Then again, so are quite a few other team members like Erika Csomor. Like Bella Comerford. I think the dinosaurs of the sport, the classic thinking of taper, of being a slave to your heart rate monitor, is being supplanted. There's a new way of thinking, being delivered by Brett Sutton and served up by this team of supposed misfits.

And that's not counting the athletes recently qualified for Athens after strong performances at World Cup Ishigaki: Reto Hug and Nicola Spirig of Switzerland and Brazilian Mariana Ohata. What can't this team do?

What I really wonder is, when is someone is going to take this team and put a title sponsor on it? Because right now, considering the exposure they'll garner in Kona, this is the most valuable commodity in the sport, and they don't even have an apparel sponsor!

Good job to Belinda and the rest of the squad keeping it rolling...

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