I Would Have Called A Tie

Congratulations to Andrea Hewitt, who won Race Two of the ITU World Cup in Madrid yesterday. Although, I'm not convinced.


This is one of many photos taken at the finish. It took five hours of deliberations by judges and officials to deem lil Hewitt the winner. Apparently, it came down to millimetres. Like, come on. Did they not both come first? You know, despite what they'd have you believe, ties do happen. Example: at last year's Paralympics in Beijing, Sophie Pascoe and Shireen Sapiro dead-heated for the gold medal in the women's S10 100m backstroke. They also shared the world record, until Soph rebroke it earlier this year. And four years before that Daniel Clausner and Andrey Strokin tied for gold in the SB13 100m breaststroke.

I'd like to allude to the fact here that Milorad Cavic and Michael Phelps dead-heated in the 100m butterfly in Beijing too, but we all know that Michael "won", according to the results, which took suspiciously longer than normal to appear.

Triathlon is slightly different to swimming. You're out there, kicking your own ass for about two hours. It's hot, it's hard, and the last thing you want is to finish at the same time as someone else and be told you came second. I get the feeling a certain Lisa Norden will be running up a storm in DC, or her next race. The DC race is June 21, for the record. I can't wait.