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Competition fierce for funding
Posted: Monday December 06, 1999 05:19 PM
Currently ranked No. 10 in the world, Australian triathlete Miles Stewart began competing in triathlons in 1985. Since then he has won a World Championship and World Cup title. The triathlon will make its Olympic debut in Stewart's home country at the 2000 Games, and the 28-year-old plans to be there. Check out Stewart's diary each month on CNNSI.com
Robina, Queensland, Australia Hi there. Well, this is the first entry of my diary. I've never written a diary before, so this is all pretty new to me. I'm told I should just write down what comes into my head. So here goes! This week has been pretty hectic. We were in Noosa last weekend for the last race of the ITU (International Triathlon Union) series but had to stay on for the OAP screening. I should explain. OAP is the Olympic Athlete Program, a group of athletes who are funded by the Olympic committee. They are the people, who by their results, have shown that they are the most likely to make the Games. There are five guys and five girls. The competition to be on this program is pretty fierce, and the numbers were just recently cut from 7 to 5, leaving awesome athletes like Brad Beven and Craig Walton on the sideline. So you can imagine how strong the team must be! Anyway, back to the point. The screening took place over two days. We spent our time running around between Physios (who checked for any injuries that might affect our performances in the coming year), doctors (who assessed our general health), sports scientists (who filmed us swimming underwater to see if we had any areas we could make more efficient), and finally our sports psychologist (who had to determine if we were going mad under the pressure!). This screening is done every six months, and we are assessed and everything is recorded. It seems from the swim film I've got plenty of little things I can pick up on, which is cool as I can improve my times. After our relaxing (not!) time in Noosa we came back home to the gold coast, where I'm based, to start back into my training ready for the one summer series. This is a made for TV series with short fast and exciting formats. Although this doesn't fit into the Olympic racing format, it is still a lot of hard work and good fun too. Next month I will let you know how I fared in the first event. I have only just resumed training after a rather lengthy break, so I am not expecting great things from this series. I will just be using it to get some good speed work and sharpen up for those qualifying races in April. See you all next month! -- Miles
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