Water Off a Duck's Back
- trisutto
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
The harder our athletes work, the luckier they seem to get.
This weekend, they got very lucky indeed.
It was an extraordinary weekend for our group. Julie Derron produced a magnificent victory at Ironman Switzerland, another performance that confirms she belongs among the very best in the world heading towards Kona. Considering the injuries and setbacks she has overcome over the past twelve months, it is an achievement built on psychological resilience as much as physiology. As an
Olympic silver medallist, however, excellence is now expected.
Her training partner is a different story.
Alanis Siffert wasn't supposed to win Challenge Roth.
Four years ago she arrived at our squad as little more than a blank piece of paper. She came from a swimming background, had done a little mountain biking, and had virtually no triathlon experience. The swim was acceptable. The bike was amateur. The run was, frankly, terrible.
It looked like a duck.
Nobody would have watched her run and thought, Future Roth champion.
But talent, as we constantly remind our community, is not just VO₂ max and lab data.
Attitude is talent.
And Duck possesses one of the best attitude’s in professional triathlon.
Her personality doesn’t need editorialising. Anyone who has watched her race, seen an interview, or bumped into her in the street already knows exactly how she is. A transparent beam of positive, joyful, and polite energy that lifts everyone around her.
It does have an edge, though.
A modest physical talent paired with completely immodest ambition. She is willing to push herself and suffer with the very best. More importantly, she is happy to share the suffering by making very good athletes uncomfortable for very long periods of time.
That is a talent.
Watching her race Roth was to see those qualities in full bloom. If she charges head-first at a brick wall, she fully expects the wall to move. And this time it did. She didn't run a marathon after riding 180 kilometres. She got off the bike and sprinted to a finish line that just happened to be 42.2 kilometres away. It could have been 100km and would have made no difference. Nor is it a come from nowhere story. She has won six races in the past twelve months, all using exactly the same
approach, including at Roth last year for a podium. So the performance was a surprise, but not a complete one.
The atmosphere at Roth certainly helped. Her parents, endurance adventurers capable of 24-hour races and mountain events most people would never contemplate, being there helped too. Add the euphoria of the Roth crowd and once she hit the front she held on like a bulldog.
The rest comes from preparation and the endless repetition of proven training methods.
For Trisutto, Roth has always been a special place.
This makes win number eight with six different athletes since 2005. It’s a helpful reminder as one suffers through endless online commentary of her ‘unique’ bike technique. As though it isn’t an exact replica of the same technique that has been used, by Chrissie and Daniela amongst others, to dominate for the last 20 years. It isn’t some strange exception. It isn’t unique. It wins. The only thing that's unusual is that, after all these years, people still think it's unusual.
Technology and marginal gains matter. We embrace them. But triathlon inhabits a kind of Bizarro World, where the far more complex science of preparing a human being to perform at their absolute physical and psychological limit for seven or eight hours is seen as less sophisticated than geeking out over tyre widths and bottle-cage measurements.
But we digress. Fortunately, after such a breakthrough all talk of the improvements should now be made to her technique, equipment and training, will be like water off a duck's back.
The process remains exactly the same. Wake up. Train. Recover. Improve a little each day. It was a magnificent race by a 24-year-old athlete. There will be more victories. There will also be disappointing defeats.
One of the enduring beauties of triathlon is that an athlete with relatively modest physical gifts can still rise to the very top through extraordinary commitment and character. That is why we love this sport.
Congratulations, Ducky.
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