LeFort eyes ironman in France after Albany win

Denmark’s Toby LeFort has powered to a big victory after putting together three terrific legs in the second edition of the Albany Sprint Triathlon at Middleton Beach on Sunday.

More than 50 competitors took part in the event, run by Albany Triathlon Club.

LeFort was a dominant force as he exited the swim leg in the top five, grabbed the lead by the end of the bike leg and then finished with a barnstorming run.

LeFort had established a solid advantage by the transition of the bike leg and then was one of only two individual runners to record a time under 20 minutes in the 5km run.

A final effort of 19min.11sec in the last leg powered the 29-year-old to his first victory in the event, crossing the line more than three minutes ahead of his nearest rival.

“I had done a few small ones (triathlons) and then set my eyes on the full Ironman at Busselton,” LeFort said. “Once I did that, I was just hooked on tris.”

He now has his sights set on performing well at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Nice, France, in September.

LeFort was first across the line in a slick time of 1hr.6min.21sec to also be the fastest in the open male division, with Alex Nichols finishing runner-up in 1:09.24.

Albany Triathlon Club members dominated the top five, with LeFort joined by newcomer Nathan Small (1:10.22) on the podium.

The top five, who were all open male competitors, was rounded out by locals Jason Bresanello (1:11.20) and Jackson Pitman (1:12.30).

Junior Daniel Buis stopped the clock in 1:13.20 to be sixth across the line officially and he was closely followed home by veteran Neil McAllister.

McAllister was the first person out of the 750m swim that kicked off the triathlon, and he won the veteran category in a time of 1:13.44.

Irish visitor Kate Collins-Smyth was the first female to finish, winning her open division in a time of 1:17.56 and local Dree Campbell (1:22.39) claimed the veteran female category.

Darryl Harris was the winner of the male super veteran division, prevailing in 1:15.05. No Days Off (1:19.27) narrowly edged out The Young & The Rest Of Us (1:19.38) in the teams category while Luke Pitman won the duathlon with a time of 1:29.58 for his run, bike, run.