New Youth Bike Course Designs

You may have noticed that the bike courses for the Victoria Youth Triathlon and the Westshore Youth Triathlon have changed. These changes were made in consultation with Triathlon BC and are part of a bigger plan to improve technical bike handling skills for our elite youth athletes.

The Victoria Youth Triathlon is race number 4 of the BC Super Series, a development series for performance pathway athletes. One of the goals of the Super Series is to develop athletes as they continue onto national and international competition. Recognizing the need to prepare athletes to compete on technical bike courses at higher levels of competition, TriBC asked us to reconfigure the bike course for Vic Youth to make it more technically challenging.

Redesigning the course to meet the needs of Super Series athletes while accommodating youth age group athletes was a bit of a challenge, and we think the course at Vic Youth meets this challenge. The new course incorporates numerous corners with shorter straight stretches to limit speed going into corners. The format of the race will limit the number of athletes on course at one time to avoid bunching on course during the age group heats.

We chose to make similar changes to the West Shore Youth Tri to give athletes an opportunity to preview the format before the Victoria Youth Tri. West Shore is two weeks before Vic Youth and has less participants, making it a perfect trial run for the new bike format.

We are excited to offer this opportunity to youth triathletes and we hope to see you at our races. The first race of the Kersten Orthodontics youth series is in four weeks so register now before fees go up.