THE 25th annual Bude Triathlon took place on Sunday, June 18 with over 200 entries.

Organised by Simon Hammond of Shoreline Extreme Sports, Bude is always a big draw for the triathletes with 218 entries, some coming from as far as the Midlands, London, the South East and even Scotland for an afternoon on the North Cornwall coast.

On a scorching hot day, with temperatures close to 30 degrees ©, the locals turned out in their droves with Summerleaze beach extremely busy.

The race starts and finishes at Summerleaze beach car park with a 500-metre swim in Summerleaze bay, a 11.5-mile cycle ride, which takes in the A39 on the way back into Bude, and a three-mile run through the town, all in the company of announcer Bill Kneebone.

David Bartlett stormed to victory in the Male Senior race, completing the course in 55 minutes and six seconds with Craig Salamone (57:53) and Ian Wright (59:15) making up the top three. Shaun Lawson was two seconds behind Wright. Those four were the only runners to complete the course inside an hour.

Hannah Colston was the fastest female in 1:10:53, over three and a half minutes quicker than Victoria Loze (1:14:28).

In the other men’s categories there were wins for Keith Brewster (1 hour, two minutes and 55 seconds) in the Veterans over 40s competition with Bude’s James Marshall (1:04:48) second while Mark Moran won the Veterans 50 competition in a time of 1:05:25, just 56 seconds clear of Phillip Smith.

The Veterans over 60s was emphatically won by Tom Daniels in a time of 1:08:32, four minutes and one second quicker than Jonathan Ford-Dunn.

It was a great day for ‘The Fry Boys’ from Bude who were victorious in the Relay Open event. Father Mini and sons Finley and Tremaine all took part in one discipline each as they competed the course in 1:10:42, 69 seconds ahead of ‘Team Gearknobs’.

Simon’s son Zerran (1:16:55) was the overall winner of the Youth race with Harrison Boden-Johns (1:28:05) a distant second.

Other notable local performances came from Bude’s Larry Newton who finished in tenth overall, Holsworthy’s Barrie Slee who has now competed in 23 of the 25 Bude Triathlons and Dan Gow (15th) and Ben Jarvis (102nd) who did the event less than 24 hours after completing a coastal marathon from Clovelly to Bude.

All the competitors received a slice of Simon’s mum Ann’s legendary wet chocolate cake upon finishing as well as competition t-shirts and a medal.

Simon admitted that the day went to plan with no major incidents to report, saying: “It was a great way to celebrate 25 years of the triathlon which is now third oldest in the county behind Fowey and Perranporth.

“Although the heat was pretty intimidating and we were slightly worried that people may suffer from heat exhaustion, there were no major incidents to report and everyone seemed to have a great time.

“There was a big crowd in lots of areas with reports of plenty of people cheering on the cyclists as they headed out towards Widemouth and back along the A39.

“We’d like to thank our two main sponsors Sampson Solicitors and The Beach at Bude. The Beach also gave all the competitors a free drink in the hotel which was very well received and I’d also like to thank all of the volunteers and marshals who made it all possible and to Bill Kneebone for the commentary. We look forward to our next event, the Bude Quadrathlon in September.”