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It was such a long season that I was struggling to hold onto any sort of form or motivation for the final World Championship series race in Auckland. I had maybe played my trump card a few months earlier in Vegas 70.3 Champs, but the excitement from last year’s race in Auckland kept me going to the bitter end.

When given the opportunity to have input into the course we decided to make it one to remember, utilizing every climb we could find in downtown Auckland, that added with icy cold water and torrential rain, even I thought we’d bitten off a little more than we could chew!

Auckland, New Zealand is one of the most beautiful cities in the world! One of my favorite things is riding or running along the waterfront next to the turquoise colored water. Unfortunately in order to sculpt such beauty, Mother Nature uses a lot of the elements and she certainly decided to lay it on that week.

In contrast to the London Olympics the women would get the sun we men who raced a day later were in for the rain.

To my surprise as I stepped out of the athletes tent and the crowds had come out in their thousands to enjoy some world class racing with the hopes (I suspect) of seeing some spills! This is a true indication of how popular the sport of Triathlon has become in New Zealand over the years.

The word on the street was that this was my last ITU race, but to be honest I have no idea! What I can tell you is that I won’t miss standing on the start line of an ITU event with 64 other monsters around you ready to beat the living crap out of you! To make it even more tense they play this stupid “heart beat” noise for dramatic effect! The start could come soon enough.

Bang; icy cold water, Russian’s foot to face, fight with Frenchie for feet in front, battle at 1st buoy, battle at 2nd buoy, sprint as someone left a gap, make it back to the pontoon, realize your only halfway, see two have broken away, dive back in on top of someone, have someone dive in on top of you, battle at 1st & 2nd buoy again, look behind and realize I’m at the back of the front group, try not to get dropped, back to pontoon, glad its over!

Running into T2 I was happy to see some of the main players like Gomez and a few Russians around, which is generally a good indication you made the front group, however I could see 2 off the front and realized one was Jonny Brownlee ‐ ARE YOU SERIOUS! Fortunately our group was very organized and we rode well to close the gap in under 2 laps.

Going into the race I was worried that the wet roads were going to be treacherous, but to my
surprise they really weren’t that bad and throughout the 40km bike I didn’t loose control once! I suspect that constant rain leading into the event had washed the roads clean.

The pace began to quicken as the bike wore on, as a small break opened I yelled at Gemmell to “Go!” next thing I know he’s 20m off the front with the others looking at me! I’m his team mate! I’m not chasing him down. This is where I had to play the “team card” trying to slow our group to enable Kris to getaway, but not too much so that the chase group would catch. More than happy to help Kris out, who would have done the same, he ended up with close to 1min lead off the bike, but with athletes like Gomez and Brownlee it wasn’t
anywhere near enough!

By this stage my long season was starting to catch up on me as well as I tried to stay in the top 10, however I had given too much time up on the 2nd group in the bike. Running down Queen Street the Kiwi public lifted my spirits, it wasn’t a fairy tale ending to the year, but they made it clear that they were still proud Kiwis and made me realize why I’m in this sport, to inspire others.

I love this sport and there is no way I’m ready to give it up just yet, yes a change of focus, I’m now aiming towards Ironman, with the hopes of winning the Hawaiian Ironman! If someone told me at the start of my ITU career that I would be a World Champion and double Olympic medalist, I would have said that’s not possible, now I believe anything is possible!

Thanks for all your support in making this happen.

Bevan