Deon’s pink Viceroys tri suit, his little crowd of squealing Viceroys supporters and Viceroys’ very own professional photographer (Jon) asking Deon to pose for a photo at the start of the elite male race, certainly made him stand out from the rest – but how was the rest of his Olympic Tri?

‘It was brutal from the gun. With the temperatures over the last few days it was decided on a non-wetsuit swim. In the elite race this makes no difference to anyone as they can all swim just fine. So the pace was fast and physical with many a kick and arm pull under the water. The wind had picked up by the time we started so we swam back into a heavy chop which made it tough. Needless to say the swim times weren’t super fast. I managed to get into a nice swim bunch and had a fairly average swim. Coming out the water it was the long leg sapping run to the bike along one of the longest transitions in triathlon. By the time u get to the bike your legs are already finished at that pace.

Anyway had a good transition and got away ahead of my bunch but the legs struggled to get going so got dropped by the second bunch and was left to pick up 2 other stragglers to eventually make a group of three. We had to work hard on the bike with our small group especially into the wind. I have never ridden that hard in my life. I was sure I was going to be able to run. We were averaging 40k/h+ and were on track for a nice sub 1hr bike split when one of party clipped a wheel and went down. We eased up to make sure he was alright and then waited to see if was going to get up and continue which he did. But by that time we had lost about 2 or 3 min. The rest of the bike was uneventful but I started to pay the price for the hard pace and not eating properly before the race. I was feeling sick and wobbly but wanted to at least finish so pushed on to the run. The first lap was really tough. But then I began feeling a bit better and gradually picked up the pace to finish strong and catch up one place before the finish. Looking at the run split after I was plenty surprised to have managed a sub 40min run.

So all in all a good hard day out and not bad for only the second race of the season. I finished in an average time of 2h08min and some change which I was happy with considering.

Thanks all the supporters I heard and saw a few Viceroys cheerleaders (aka Karen, Lara, Kate)’