Lewis is second home but finishes third

After 19 quieter months for the Island Games champion, the Wales-based triathlon star finally returned to a multi-sport start line on Sunday and celebrated with a podium in the Castle Combe ‘Chilly’ Duathlon, although even he is debating his exact position.

‘In my head I came second, in the results I came third,’ Lewis said after one competitor presumably read the fine print in the race rules and exploited the organisers’ choice to remove transitions from finish times.

Organisers had adopted seeded waves of six due to Covid measures and Lewis quickly assumed second, never seeing third after that.

The Ravenscroft-backed Lewis defied race rust to run two miles in under 10min., cycle nearly 10 miles in 20min. 35sec. and produce a second run only slightly slower than the first.

That put him second across the line in 40-41, some 1-45 back on ‘Worlds’ competitor Alex Wade.

And so Lewis was surprised to see Alex Doherty splitting them in the official results.

‘They null and voided the transitions, so what happened was that the guy that ended up coming second spent about four minutes in transition resting,’ he said.

‘It sounds a bit outrageous,’ he added in a fairly light-hearted manner.

‘A don’t hate the player, hate the game thing?’

However, being back racing was a major positive in itself for Lewis.

He had notched third at Guernsey’s Boxing Day cross-country but had otherwise not competed since running 15-15 for 5km on New Year’s Eve 2019, and his last multi-sport event was even further back.

‘As a previous swimmer, I did races week in, week out and we did 10 to 14 races over a weekend,’ he added.

‘Moving into triathlon, I was still competing throughout the whole of the season, but not as frequently.

‘Having now taken 19 months out, I was not used to going through the feeling of racing.’

But following a satisfactory return, he now eyes next month’s Sospan Sprint Triathlon Llanelli, which promises a quality elite field if it goes ahead.