NEWS

Zagreb welcomes Juniors: downtown race in a capital city

By Paul Groves | 15 Sep, 2016


Last year’s event was a great success and we are delighted to see that once more this city-centre triathlon has returned to the ETU calendar.  The water quality is great and has been awarded the blue flag. Regular checks on the water are taken. Check the results here.

Last year saw the Balkan Championships hosted here.

Click here for the video.

These championships were incorporated into the race and opened up the competition to athletes from all over Europe.

For the women, first out of the water and first over the finish line was Jana Koradej SLO.

The men’s race was won by Hungarian László Tarnai.

There were competitions for juniors and age groups that delivered athletes to the venue in temperatures well up into the 30’s.

With temperatures set to be a bit lower and with the chance of a shower, there will perhaps not be the crystal-clear photos we saw last year but the line-up is a really exciting one.

With the ETU Development camp in Medulin just finishing we can expect to see some inspiring performances from new athletes and lots of coaching data being collected by Željko Bijuk, Sports Development Co-Ordinator for Europe.

2016 sees an ETU Triathlon Junior European Cup. Under the watchful eye of the Technical Delegate, Andreas Galanos, who has just finished his duties for ITU in Rio, there will be a team of new officials ready to test their knowledge as they emerge from the pressures of the Level I Technical Officials’ Course, delivered by Duncan Hough, also fresh from Rio.

There will be briefings for all categories on Saturday and Sunday kicks off with the Age Group athletes racing on an International Course. We can expect to see great photos in Social Media as the expected hundreds arrive to try the swim / bike / run in downtown Zagreb. The highlight will be the ETU Junior Cup and we can expect big crowds to turn out to cheer them along.
40 Junior Women from 12 federations will line up for the 750m swim / 20k bike and 5k run.

Leading the rankings and wearing #1 will be Austria’s new discovery, Pia Totschnig.

Her performances this year have been top-ten for each race and so far she has scooped up a gold (in Tulcea) and a silver in the Bled Super-Sprint.  In Bled she showed great bike control at the dismount, when a fellow competitor crashed just in front of her and then out on the run just kicked. Her running pace has been truly impressive and she will be very much the one that other athletes will be trying to escape from on the swim and early stages of the bike.

Another athlete with good pace on the run is Italy’s Carlotta Missaglia, gold medal winner in Melilla at the very start of this year’s racing season. Quicker in the water, she will need to put together and good swim and initial work on the bike to keep away from the Austrian and if she can work with Daniela Leitāne LAT who won gold in Kupiškis and who missed the podium in Riga then together they might make some distance. Totschnig saw Missaglia take silver to her bronze in Tiszaújváros earlier this year and a quick look at the results suggests that the result might have been different if she had not served a ten-second penalty. We can expect a real rush for the blue carpet here.

From Hungary and hoping for a podium this time around are Fanni Soós and Dorottya Petrov. Croatian hopes will ret upon Elisabetta Vitasović, whose broken bike chain earlier this week really was not what she wanted in the build-up to this race. “Bolje danas nego u subotu!”

For a full start list, please click here.

For the men a massive 73 athletes are on the start list. Representing 20 federations this will be an amazing race to watch. Wearing #1 and from Kazakhstan comes Merilan Iskakov. Focussing mainly on the ASTC events, he will be facing stiff competition from established athletes and most importantly from the fired-up Austrians who have been racing tactically this year.

Lukas Gstaltner leads that team and with a bronze from Tulcea he will be keen for the same approach this time around. Supported by and perhaps up against Tjebbe Kaindl and Leon Pauger they will face stiff opposition from the ETU Junior Duathlon Champion from Germany, Moritz Horn.

Luka Paliska will be supported by the home crowds.

He has swim pace and might just make the podium on home soil.

For a full start list, please click here.
 

All the hard work has been done. Zagreb’s Mayor Mr. Milan Bandić joined forces with Croatian Triathlon Federation’s President Dorijan Pavliša and LOC President Gordan Zelenika.


Sretno!

Related Event: 2016 Zagreb ETU Triathlon Junior European Cup
18 Sep, 2016 • event pageall results
Results: Junior Men
1. Sergiy Polikarpenko ITA 00:53:52
2. Moritz Horn GER 00:54:07
3. Botond Karai HUN 00:54:19
4. Tomas Zikmund CZE 00:54:25
5. Florian Müller SUI 00:54:29
6. Simon Westermann SUI 00:54:31
7. Matus Verbovsky SVK 00:54:58
8. Jakob Sosniok ITA 00:55:03
9. Valerio Cattabriga ITA 00:55:09
10. Meirlan Iskakov KAZ 00:55:14
Results: Junior Women
1. Pia Totschnig AUT 00:59:49
2. Julie Jungblut GER 01:00:02
3. Magdalena Früh AUT 01:00:18
4. Klaudia Sebők HUN 01:00:38
5. Pia Hehenwarter AUT 01:00:47
6. Carlotta Missaglia ITA 01:00:50
7. Dorottya Petrov HUN 01:00:52
8. Tjasa Vrtacic SLO 01:00:54
9. Sharon Spimi ITA 01:01:05
10. Kristina Jesenska SVK 01:01:27