By Dongyun Kwon
Yarra Glen resident Jeremy Critchett won the 2024 World Triathlon Cross Triathlon Championships Townsville for his age group on Tuesday 20 August.
Critchett is currently 56 years old and participated for the age group of 55 to 59 taking first place for his age group and 19th place overall.
He said it’s an honour to win the recent competition.
“As well as being relieved, I feel grateful for the experience I’ve had,” Critchett said.
Critchett’s strengths are biking and running and his weakness is swimming.
Unfortunately, on the day, Townsville had a strong shore wind with the rough water, making his swimming harder, an unusual weather condition for Townsville, which normally has flat and glassy water with nice weather.
Despite the bad weather, he successfully finished a 1.5-kilometre sea swim, 20-kilometre mountain bike ride and six-kilometre off-road run with a record of 1:45:34.
“It was really difficult to get across around the first buoy which is 200 metres out from the shore,” the 56-year-old man said.
“I really struggled but I managed to finally get out of the water in sixth place in my age group.
“I was three minutes down from the lead, and because I knew the course so well, I knew where I needed to push hard and did my best to catch up.”
About 70 men from three age groups between 45 and 59 ran together at the same time.
“I got on to the first section of the technical trail in second place, and another five or ten minutes later, I got into first place,” Critchett said.
“And then I just started to advance through the field of other age groups.
“I ended up coming 19th overall out of everyone who did in all the different age groups.”
The Yarra Glen resident had two years of training to prepare for this competition,
He mainly did local based training in the lots of bike parks with different types of skill sets across Melbourne and at the hills around Yarra Glen.
Critchett said it is important to train as close to the race context as possible to win a competition.
“I got a chance to go up to Townsville six times, so I’ve reconned the course, and I knew every corner,” he said.
“I went up there last year and I did a practice lapse on the bike course. A month later, I did the Australian champs on the course, and I won the Australian champs.
“I went up three times more before last week on a two-day visit each time to recon the course and continue to learn about the details around the course, certain features and corners.”
Critchett first got into triathlon in 1994 before he started cross triathlon.
While traditional triathlons involve swimming in open water followed by cycling and running on flat surfaces such as tarmacked roads, a cross triathlon, also known as off-road triathlon or X-tri, features open water swimming, then mountain biking and trail running across rough, hilly terrain and various obstacles.
Critchett said he’s always had an interest in sports and loved running and bike riding.
“Once I got through university and into my first job, there was a point in time where I was changing jobs, and I had an interest in watching the pro triathlon Grand Prix series on TV and talking about it at work,” he said.
“Somebody said ‘you’d never get to be like those guys’, and I don’t know what it was but I, at that point where I changed jobs, took a few years off work and started entering triathlons and ended up racing elite level within about a year.
“As I had time off work, I was effectively training full time. I started training with some professional triathletes who ended up going to the Olympics, world titles and pro titles.”
Critchett trained full time for a few years trying to see how close he could get to bigger competitions like the Commonwealth Games.
However, he found it too hard to break into that level because of his age as well as without professional support.
“I needed to go back into engineering to work but it gave me enough of a taste,” Critchett said.
“I restarted my interest when I was 45, and since then, I’ve been doing all these age group races and trying to get access into world championship races and seeing how well I could do in the world championship races.”
In 2018, he won two titles in sprint and Olympic distance races for his age group 50 to 54 at ITU World Triathlon Age-Group Championships Gold Coast.
In 2019, Critchett participated in Ironman 70.3 World Championship Nice and ended up seventh place for his age group 50 to 54.
The triathlon lover said the experience of triathlon has given him insights around resilience, perseverance and potential.
“It gave me some real insights that you just really don’t know what can happen,” he said.
“Potential of anything is so open that you can’t necessarily be restricted by what you think or what you feel.
“It has also given me big insights in lots of different aspects like managing emotion, dealing with skills around perseverance and resilience.”
