Dear members

For those unaware of this past weekend’s events, I will include only a very short summary as the official Triathlon Scotland statement has been attached at the bottom for your information.  You may recall some time ago we put out a call to see if the club wished to put any teams forward to the Mixed Team Relay Championships in Monikie Park.  We had 3 of our very talented juniors; Callum Byrne, Anya MacLean and Jess Turnbull, plus their TS academy squad friend and friend of the club William Taylor from Borders tri, put a formidable team together for this event.  The team raced exceptionally well and went on to win the event by a margin of 2 minutes over the whole field.  Please remember there is no age limit to those racing so our juniors took some well seasoned senior and veteran racers down!

Unfortunately events followed that resulted in confusion at the race venue and an appeal going in against the team resulting in them being demoted not only from the podium but out of the race entirely and into the open race.  The appeal was that not all relay team members had been members of Fusion Triathlon club for more than 28 days.  The team had been contacted by TS the evening before the race and informed that as one member was not a Fusion member they were not entitled to race in the Championship race but could do so if that team member joined the club before end of office hours that day.  Some frantic phone calls later and the team were assured by TS that all membership issues were sorted.  So to be told differently and go through what these teenagers endured straight after the elation of winning the relay Championship so convincingly is unthinkable.

The main purpose of this communication is to bring to light the level of maturity and dignity these teenagers demonstrated under such disappointing and confusing circumstances.  They not only raced fair but they raced hard and they raced well.  Nothing that happened subsequent to the race finishing will ever take away a race performance nor will it take away the professionalism with which our juniors competed and conducted themselves throughout the day. 

Callum, Anya, William and Jess thank you for showing maturity, dignity and composure throughout.  You are a credit to yourselves, your parents, the coaching staff, Fusion Triathlon club and the sport as a whole.  I sincerely hope you remain proud of yourselves and do not let the weekends events dampen your drive and spirit. 

From Fusion Triathlon club, we thank you

Keep up the great work