- Date
- 27 Aug 2014
- Tags
- Nanjing 2014 , YOG , IOC News
Triathlon embraces the Youth Olympic Spirit
Team USA’s triathlon coach Ian Murray has fully embraced the spirit of the Youth Olympic Games. In a great act of kindness, on seeing the condition of Boris Teddy’s (SOL) bike, the triathlete competing at the YOG for the Solomon Islands, Murray decided to step in and lend him his own.
"It wasn’t adequate,” Murray said, “The wheel was bent. It was very heavy. The components were very old. It was just a slow bike.”
A decent training session is hard to come by for Boris – as he is not used to the smooth roads and calm water of Nanjing. “The facilities in my country are not really good,” Teddy said.
“For my riding exercise, the roads are bad. We don’t have good roads in the Solomon Islands. There are many potholes and trucks, so I usually train in the morning and evening when it’s a bit quieter.”
The bike was used in a unique YOG mixed relay, where they placed 16th out of 16, but Boris said the bike was definitely an improvement! So much so that an eventual member of the winning team ‘Europe 1’ -Ben Dijkstra (Great Britain), commended Boris on ‘holding his own’ on the bike.
This result is not likely to dishearten Boris, as he was delighted to witness other triathletes and the level to which to aspire to - “I have to train harder so that I can catch up to them, to their level” he added, ahead of his return to the Solomon Islands.