Official Coach’s Post-Race Report
Junior men World Championships 2015-Drew Williams
This event scheduled to be held on 17 September at 4:30pm, was at the last minute postponed due to pending thunder storms. All athletes, coaches and mangers were evacuated from the swim start, to the Congress Hotel across the road. There we were informed of a delayed start and later informed that it would now probably be a Duathlon- 5km run (2 laps)/20km bike (4 laps)/2,5km (1 lap) run. That was later confirmed and the start would be in 20minutes time. Obviously this situation was hard for all athletes to cope with and gave them minimal time to warm up properly. This later resulted in many athletes cramping. Drew coped exceptionally well with the situation, having mixed feelings about it being a duathlon, as he has worked exceptionally hard on his swimming since he qualified for Worlds.
Right from the gun a front pack developed with phenomenal speed. Drew soon settled into the second pack and after lap1was only 20 seconds down from the leaders and by lap 2 was 50 seconds down with a run split of 16:13. After a quick transition, he stayed with the pack on the bike. The bike course was fast and furious with many 180′ turns which prevented the athletes from being able to settle into a comfortable pace. Drew managed to maintain his position on the bike and into T2. After a slower transition than usual due to the earlier wet conditions, he exited T2 in 52 position and ran well to finish in 50th place out of 79 athletes who started. He was the first African nation to cross the finish line.
With such uncertainty and confusion at the beginning of the race, I feel Drew coped exceptionally well with the situation. He gave his all throughout the race and I am extremely proud of him and his result.
He has done Zimbabwe proud.
