205 Adults, 21 Children and a perfect day!

RACE MORNING

The sun rose on Sunday morning over a perfectly calm sea. No wind, blue sky, the perfect weather conditions for a triathlon race.

At 07:30am the athletes started filling in, queuing up to get their race-packs and check-in at the transition area. The transition area was set up for 240 athletes, close to our full capacity of 250 athletes. This is as much as Schiniathlon can accommodate for a single race!

Moraitis Sports Centre was buzzing with excitement as the start time approached. A short race briefing was held, followed by a little warm-up in the sea. Then it was 09:45am, time for everyone to pack behind the starting line, on the beach-front.

THE RACE

Count-down from 5-4-3-2-1... and then it seemed that the athletes threw themselves into some sort of infernal washing machine, water splashing from everywhere, arms and legs sticking out of the water in the most surrealistic vision!

Slowly slowly the pack of athletes got more or less into a line and settled into a more ordinate procession. A group of fast swimmers quickly made their way ahead of the pack, led by Minas Vasiliadis, George Alyfantis and Giannis Fanakis. These 3 athletes exited the water and reached the transition-zone in less than 11 minutes, quite a remarkable fast time!

From these 3 athletes, only one was still up in front after the bike. On a totally flat course and without any wind, course records have been broken this Sunday with 7 athletes clocking in under 32 minutes!

Filipos Andrianopoulos returned first from the bike in 44:02mn (combined swim and bike) followed by George Alyfantis still in the leading group. Aimilios Tsepetis headed the chasing pack 1 minute after the pair. The fastest bike time of the day was posted by Konstantinos Papanikolaou in 31:06mn who was well decided to make his way towards the front despite a 18th position at the swim...

This event was to be won on the run course. Having passed Andrianopoulos, George Alyfantis managed to maintain his position at the top of the race until mid-way through the run. But all his efforts were not enough to stop the un-stoppable Konstantinos Papanikolaou who finally made it to the head of the pack at the 3rd kilometer of the run, clocking the 5km run in under 20 minutes.

Konstantinos Papanikolaou wins the race in 1:05:03, followed by George Alyfantis24sc later and Stelios Andreadis another 10sc behind.

In the women’s field competition was running high too. Leading the way out of the water in 12:33 was Lina Psouni, in her first participation at Schiniathlon. She was followed by Eirini Denaxa, Alexia Barrable, Christina Bhanos and Vassiliki Koukoutsi, all under 15 minutes.

On to the bike and Vassiliki reached pole position with the fastest bike in 36:08. Christina Bhanos clocked the 2nd best time in 37:12.

Vassiliki started the run in front, followed by Lina Psouni and Christina Bhanos on her heels. It was a matter of minutes before Christina took the lead. But this was not to last for long. Heidi Diakoumopoulou pulled up her silver bullet and litteraly flew by Christina, taking the lead and closing to the finish.... 5 minutes clear of the chasing pack!

Heidi Diakoumopoulos wins in 1:16:49, followed by Christina Bhanos in 1:21:34 and Lina Psouni in 1:21:56. With a record breaking 19 women on the starting line, competition is getting stronger – let’s hope the trend keeps going this way!

CHILDREN

Meanwhile the children got ready and very excited at the prospect of their upcoming race. 21 children aged 4 to 11 years-old got on the starting line of their first «splash & dash» aka swim & run event. 100m of swim followed by 200m run on the beach. As always, it was a joy to watch the excitement, dedication and smiles of delight on the faces of the children.

AFTERMATHS

The party then started with «Lester & The Cool» playing live music at the grass area, fresh drinks were available from a boat filled with ice, all the athletes got their food pack to restore their energy levels – and then the rain came in!

This Schiniathlon (as all previous ones did) breaks again the record of participation at a single triathlon event in Greece. Never before have we seen a mass start of over 200 athletes in the water in this country!

Accommodating so many athletes was once more a challenge. We had to improve our infrastructure and upgrade technology. Chronos technology for the time-keeping consisted of shoe-chip and bike-chip, allowing us to record close to 1.200 times (6 times per athlete: swim, T1, bike, T2, run, finish).

Once again infrastructure, research & development and technology has improved thanks to our series sponsor,Multirama, who has renewed its support to Schiniathlon in 2010. 
Multirama also offered a series of gifts for the athletes (notebook, mobile phone, digital camera, hard drive, USB and pc games) – the list of winners has been published on our website. The lottery of the athletes also had 3 pairs of Zoot running shoes from Pulse100, T-shirts from Tri-Greece and Twin Six and running caps from New Balance.

We thank our sponsors for their support: 
Thanks go first and foremost to Multirama for their consistent and strong support. Thanks also to Pulse100 andFitSN who ran kiosks at the Schiniathlon EXPO. Moraitis Sports Centre with whom we have celebrated 3 years of brilliant cooperation (May 2007 – May 2010) – the event could not exist without Dimitris Moraitis support and involvement. Thanks to Coca-Cola HBC for their supplies of drinks, to GU Gels for bringing energy gels to each athlete. Thanks to Pharmshop for their discreet but much appreciated support. World of bike for their bike service in the morning to all the athletes.

Thanks to the support we received: from the Samaritans of the Red Cross, from the Traffic Police and Municipal Police of Marathonas.