Wins for Travers and Murphy in Vazon Surf Triathlon

Meanwhile, Magda Murphy spent the final leg running scared from recent Island Games team gold medallist Chantal Green to seal her first win of the much-changed women’s season.

As triathletes gathered en masse to tackle the opening swim on the scenic beach at 7am, it was clear that Sunday’s event would not quite live up to its name.

There was a distinct lack of choppy ‘surf’ and with the unexpectedly low tide, a swim billed as 750m came up a couple hundred metres short.

Even so, junior Thierry Le Cheminant had time to establish an initial gap on Travers – who was practising non-wetsuit racing for the coming ‘Worlds’ – and stay ahead on the extended run back to the slip.

Le Cheminant still led through transition but the experienced Travers quickly clipped in his bike shoes and blasted through to what would be a race-long lead.

Dan Armsden was quick in pursuit and, impressively, managed to gain on ‘Trav’ in the tailwind-assisted portion of the 20km bike leg.

Yet Travers worked his magic on the tougher return section and entered the 5km run with a one-minute lead.

The pair were on a guaranteed path to the top two spots and not too far back, veteran Ian Scholes led recent Island Games man Dave Mosley with a small point to prove.

Travers eventually powered to a 56min. flat victory, making just over two minutes on buzzing runner-up Armsden, and a strong-running Scholes followed next with another sub-hour time.

‘It went all right – I went non-wetsuit today, which is a bit of a change-up,’ said Travers, who admitted to some fatigue after joining Armsden at the previous evening’s Runway Ride.

‘I just went for it on the bike again. Dan caught me up a bit on the outwards leg and then I pulled away from him a bit.

‘My plan was to try and go as hard as I could on the run ... I managed to pick up a decent winning margin.’

The women’s race took somewhat longer to come to its decisive – and quite surprising – ending.

Several had left the swim in close sequence but the cycle had whittled it down to a duel between Murphy and the emerging Green for sprint-distance honours.

Past running specialist Green quickly closed a sizeable gap to mere seconds and, lapping up encouragement at the mid-way point, her overtake looked imminent.

But Murphy next came into view having re-established a lead of nearly a minute and reversed expectations to win in 1-05-24.

‘The run was a mystery, because I haven’t done speed training or intervals since January, when I had a flare-up of Achilles injury,’ said Murphy.

‘But for some reason, I like this course so I was pushing and obviously, I did well, which I’m very pleased about.

‘I saw Chantal chasing me down and I was like “I can only count on myself”.

‘I didn’t know if she still had something in the tank, so I was just trying to keep my pace and it worked.’