Triathletes take in Ripon event as part of club championships
The Ripon Triathlon Festival held 12 to 13 July 2025 was a family-friendly event operated by Ripon Triathlon Club in partnership with the Brownlee Foundation.
The standard distance event was one chosen by the Bassetlaw Triathlon Club as one of their own championship events and so attracted a few club members to enter.
The course is set in the beautiful Ripon Racecourse, in the Yorkshire dales. The open water 1.5km swim took place in the onsite lake, the bike takes athletes onto the roads in the local area for 40km and then finally finishing with a tow path run along the stunning Ripon waterways for 10km,
Of the six members that entered, Barnaby Gray was first home in a time of 2 hours and 18 minutes with Stuart Tuner just a couple of minutes behind.
Further afield in south Wales at the Swansea Ironman 70.3 event had three club members testing themselves over the one-loop 1.2-mile swim beginning at the Prince of Wales Dock, followed by a one-loop 56-mile bike course will go through Mumbles along roads that hug the Gower’s coastal clifftops before cycling out through Rural Swansea and heading back along Swansea Bay into the city.
Lastly, athletes will take on a 13.1-mile two loop run course which takes them from the city centre, out past the new eye-catching gold-coloured Swansea Arena, towards Mumbles before heading back towards the finish line at the Marina. Club chairman, Darren Raines was first across the infamous Ironman finish line with a time of 5 hours and 15 minutes but full points go to Andrew Jones, who despite a nasty fall in the transition area finished with a time of 6 hours and 2 minutes,
The Bassetlaw club is running its own sprint event on Sunday August 17th and is a great event for anyone wanting to try the sport for the first time. Details can be found at https://www.bassetlawtriclub.co.uk/triathlon