Alan Clark’s ETU experience:

‘Not an  ideal start to a good week racing in Turkey, as those lovely French air traffic controllers chucked their toys out of their pram to bring chaos to anyone wishing to travel through their airspace. We were delayed 3 hrs and then a 1 1/2 hour queue outside the hotel and I got to my bed at 3.30 am.

The following day we built bikes, swam rekkie, bike rekkie, race briefed, racked bikes and sat in our hotel removing heads from our backsides. Before I knew it,  I was hanging on a rope on the start pontoon .The race went well for me, 8th in the swim in balmy warm sea water and I made up 1 place on the bike and the 2 places on the run to finish 5th in agegroup and 3rd Brit. Worst bit was Thursday all day on feet for 1 day prep, best bit was running up the blue carpeted finish chute while you felt everyone there was cheering come on GB. ‘