Woman wins gold medals at world triathlon championships

A WOMAN from Peppard Common has scooped two gold medals at the World Triathlon Championships in Australia, only two years after she started training full-time.

Nicola Taylor said she felt proud to represent Team GB in competition in Wollongong, New South Wales, on October 16 and 17.

The 45-year-old played for the England lacrosse team for seven years, participating in two World Cups before retiring in 2008, and said she enjoyed returning to the international stage.

Nicola added: “It’s brilliant. I’ve realised how much I’ve missed the buzz.

“I’m very proud to be wearing the kit and it’s nice being in that headspace where all you have to think about is doing the thing you love and performing well, so I really enjoyed it.”

The mother-of-two works in the charity sector and juggles 12 hours of weekly training, including swimming twice a week, running and swimming three times a week and then strength training at the gym.

Her coach, Sophie Whitworth, who runs Swim to Live in Henley, devises her training plans while Tom Sturgess at Badgemore Park is her personal trainer.

Mrs Taylor was a member of Henley Swim Club as a child and continued swimming as an adult, competing with her brother in races such as the Great North Swim in Windermere. She said: “I’ve always done a lot of running training when I used to play lacrosse for England, and I was doing quite a lot of local running races around Henley in the last five or six years. I decided I wanted to do another challenge but I was new to cycling.

“Each discipline has its own specific plan to it and needs to it. It varies. You have to do more bike training because of the longer distance, and make sure the training is proportional to the amount of time you’re going to spend doing that for the race.

“Triathlon training is very structured and making sure you’re not overtraining and getting fatigued. It’s very controlled and managed compared to training I’ve done for other sports.”

Her first foray into triathlons was five years ago, when friends persuaded her to participate in a race at Blenheim Palace. “I signed up having not done a huge amount of training for it. It went a lot better than I expected,” she said.

“I decided two or three years ago to try longer distances and went from there.” Nicola represented Team GB in the 45 to 49 age category at the European Championships in Istanbul in September, where she won a silver medal in the Standard Olympic distance.

At the World Championships last month, Nicola scooped a gold medal in Aquabike, another gold in the Team GB Sprint Relay team and a silver in the individual Sprint Triathlon.

Mrs Taylor said: “I wasn’t expecting to come back with so many medals and I’d never done the mixed team relay before either.

“As the last leg on the mixed team relay crossed the finish line, you could hear the tannoy shout ‘GB are coming through as world champions’, so it was just an amazing result at the end of a very good week.”

Nicola was joined in Australia by her husband, Brendan and their two children, Jack, 10, and Sophie, eight, who were watching their mum race for the second time.

“Often the races in the UK are quite far from home and it’s ridiculously early morning starts, so it was nice having them there to see what I do. As a mum who doesn’t get much time off from her kids, it’s lovely having them come to watch.”

She added: “There are ladies out in Australia in their seventies and eighties still racing and winning medals, and it was really inspiring to see them as part of the GB team as well.”