Tri247's John Levison is out in Vancouver for the ITU's World Championships this weekend. He's going to be contributing a regular diary item as the events unfold. There's a picture gallery (see the link above) which we will be updating and changing as the weekend unfolds.

Sunday

Guess what? 6:30am and it's raining...

Incredible Tucker wins: (see here), as does Brownlee in the Under-23's (see here).

Am I a lucky charm? I've been to four World Standard Distance champs: Manchester 1993, Cancun 2002, Lausanne 2006 and Vancouver 2008. Spencer Smith, Leanda Cave, Tim Don and now Helen Tucker all won elite gold...I'm free and available as team mascot for Beijing!

A final thought to wrap for the week, which I think sums up the glamour (not!) of winning at the highest level in our fantastic, yet at times still minority sport. Walking across the GM Place, venue of this evening's Age Group party & awards, a young, understated and quiet young lady approaches the bar to purchase a drink, purse in hand. The young lady was called Helen Tucker, and barely five hours previously she had won the World Championship. Fortunately your reporter spotted this and figured that on today of all days, Miss Tucker should not have to be buying her drinks! So, diet coke it was (always the athlete...). From everyone involved in triathlon in Britain, cheers!

Saturday

What to say about today? Gutted for (but still awesome!):

Emma-Kate Lidbury, who led the 25-29 age aroup for two hours...only to get pipped in the last 200m by a hard-running Aussie. Awesome performance, the fastest Brit again and provisionally the second fastest time of the day too. Even the massive GB support crew wasn't quite enough to secure the gold. (Picture added to the image gallery)

Sophie Whitworth, who secured her third silver medal in four years after Honolulu and Hamburg. Sophie has been competing in World's for the best part of a decade, and puts her heart and soul into this event. I'm sure that gold will come!

Rhian Roxburgh. Our athlete of the month for May (see here), got edged out by one second in a sprint for the line by a New Zealander. That one second, being the difference between bronze and fourth...

Darren Evans (my room mate here), arrived with an ankle injury. Tried to run on the first day here and managed 200m before turning back in pain. Had planned to try and tough it out on race day and just survive, hoping he could manage one run. Hearing that it was a duathlon, really wasn't what he wanted. And he wasn't last either!

Anyone else who didn't get to do the 'tri' - even the weaker swimmers were frustrated and upset.

We're all off to the Irish bar to 'refuel', and I fully expect a Mr Tracy Harris (World Champion) to be on top form! Tomorrow it's the elite's and under-23's...hopefully we'll manage decent weather AND a reasonably accurate course for once this week?

The Editor's comments

One could laugh or one could cry - the ITU are not having the best of luck with this World Championships... Today's races started with a shortened 1,100m swim [Ed: not sure how they worked that out based on the rulebook and the given temperature...] but has now changed to a duathlon after all the women up to 55 had already done the swim. It's now a 3k run and then 40k bike, 10k run for the remaining women and all the men. At least the weather is better! (For those not able to see the tongue in the cheek, the winds have got up again which is what caused the swim to be cancelled - the water 'miraculously' went up to 12.5 degrees overnight which is just enough for a 1500m swim...)

The medals are starting to come: (please note that these are all provisional and include our (on site...) interpretation of 'strange' results - odd things seem to happen between the live timing and the final results...)

Gold: Mark Couldwell (30-34), Juliet Vickery (45-49), Tracey Harris (45-49), Barry Jameson (55-59), Barbara Leverett (60-64), Melanie Easter (AWAD), Graham Kiff (AWAD)
Silver: Emma-Kate Lidbury (25-29), Jill Parker (30-34), Sophie Whitworth (35-39), Mark Hirsh (45-49)
Bronze: Lisa Greenfield (35-39), Richard Melvern (60-64), Robert Butler (65-69)

Friday

Beautiful weather today, crisp, clear and dry. Well, it is now it’s mid-afternoon! All morning yesterday’s (wet) weather continued, and it wasn’t exactly warm either.

After yesterday’s junior event and their mega-long swim, (on a completely different course), first task of the day was to check the swim times from the first wave, to get a feel for how long the swim was. We’d been advised that it was 800m, but when it was almost 17 minutes before the first girl hit the shore, it was clear we were all in for a long morning. Depending who you believe, water temperature was in the 12-13 centigrade range. [Ed, they later confirmed that it was just below 12°...]

Despite being a distinctly average (at best) swimmer, I really enjoyed my swim! No problems with direction, unlike the guy in front of me, who was possibly the worst navigator in triathlon history, and would likely have saved himself several minutes by swimming in a straight line. A time of 20:34 is pretty meaningless, but I felt good, and most people after the event estimate the swim was really in the 1100-1200m range (at least in ‘equivalent’ terms). Only two guys broke 14 minutes all morning. Into transition and I was feeling very dizzy. Not unstable, but a very fuzzy head! Glad I had the neoprene hat on; else I’m sure it would have been worse.

The bike wasn’t much fun. It was very cold after the swim, and took several kilometres to feel almost human again. The three-lap, 7km course was very wet, had a distinctly average road surface and crossed many white lines and zebra crossings, plus a wooden bridge. My kamikaze rating was definitely set to ‘low’ today, and I had no intention of making a close encounter with road rash, and crashing. That seemed to be the case across the board, and I really didn’t see any suicidal descending. As a result, the bike was a little frustrating, and more about survival. I was wearing the T.ESS Megalight base layer under my tri-suit, and as per our test earlier in the year, it was perfect and helped keep the cold conditions at bay.

The run was much more enjoyable! A fast dismount into T2 and my legs were feeling pretty good. I’ve not really got my ‘old’ run form back (yet…), but one thing I have been doing relatively well is running off the bike, courtesy of a solid winter of regular turbo/run sessions with my training group (the ‘Team Evil’ Hillingdon girl’s!). Once my cold hands had managed to pull on the lace locks, I started running and immediately felt … absolutely brilliant. I bounded out of transition and for a few hundred metres felt like superman! Quickly realising that I’m certainly not that, I consciously calmed myself down a little, not wanting to blow-up 500m into the run. I still felt good, and was passing far more people than the reverse, though mostly from other waves. There were loads on “go GB, looking good!” calls, and I even managed a few “I’m feeling good!” responses. The best encouragement of the day though was the “go Canada” chants I heard with about 250m left, as a home athlete had just overtaken me. No way am I accepting that, I thought, and I just took off at the fastest sprint pace I could manage, and left him for dust. Unfortunately I could only maintain the sprint for 200m, which meant the last 50m into the finish straight was a little painful, but Mr Canada had already been dealt with. Job done and Colette even saw me finish live on the webcam in London.

I was a little wobbly on finishing, and the support crew were handing out space blankets. One lady seemed a little concerned with my welfare, though I assured her I just needed a minute to return the land of the living. I wobbled over to a fence for support, composed myself, and for a few moments had a bit of an ‘emotional moment’ and shed a few tears on my own, as I thought about Colette not being able to be here, and some of the crap we’ve been through over the past few years. 27th in age group, 15th Brit (of 20) doesn’t mean to much in the big scheme of things, but I’d had fun, a good race overall (swim and run particularly) and it was another small step in the right direction and I was happy.

A big thanks to all the GB supporters out on the course, it really is appreciated by everyone racing. Special thanks to Melissa, Jenny, Suzanne, Michelle and Darren for their support too, you are all stars. Oh, and you’ll never appreciate how good a grande latte and a massive double chocolate cookie tastes ten minutes after finishing, massive thanks for that!

Tomorrow it’s the AWAD and age groupers over the standard distance, and for me a busy (and possibly more stressful!) day supporting my team, running around the course with stopwatch and pen in coach mode. I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

Thursday

Bright sparks light up an otherwise miserable day…

The weather started grey, overcast and drizzly. And then just got worse: wet, wet, wet just about sums it up and it’s showing no sign of relenting, at least for the sprint distance athletes (including me), tomorrow. I’m hoping my support team will be standing nearby with all my warm clothes near the finish line!

The juniors gave us a real boost first thing. I was up bright and early to see Kirsty McWilliam follow in the footsteps of Hollie Avil and Anneliese Heard by becoming World Junior Champion for Britain. I’m not sure how the swim course was measured, but they were in the water for an awful long time. I hope the same method isn’t used for my race tomorrow! Kirsty was third out, around 26 seconds down and she closed most of that on the first lap of the bike. From there, despite working hard on the front of her breakaway group of three, she ran away to a very clear and impressive victory. With Avil, McWilliam and hopefully others to follow, the future looks bright. I spoke (briefly!) to a happy but cold Kirsty immediately after the race, and she said “the swim felt terrible, it just went on and on”. Despite her great results so far this year, apparently she had been “sick as a dog” for ten days after Reading (Corus Race), and the prep hadn’t actually gone that smoothly. It didn’t show, and a thrilled Heather Williams, GB Performance Director was grinning like a Cheshire cat, as were all the McWilliam fans, in their Scottish t-shirts. Job done, very impressive.

Jonathon Brownlee took off in the boys race where elder brother Alistair left off for the past two years. His bronze, courtesy of blistering run meant a full-house of medals for the family, following gold and silver for Alistair in Lausanne and Hamburg. Interesting to note that in the recent Madrid World Cup, second and third were Ivan Vasiliev and Alistair Brownlee. Here, second and third were Denis Vasiliev and Jonathon Brownlee … some talented gene pools there, and possibly a decade of competition ahead for both families?

The weather meant that the proposed parade of nations was cancelled, and I suspect a few people will be looking out of the window and thinking that a trek to the pasta party may not be quite as appealing as it may have been.

So, tomorrow and Saturday it’s the Age Group and AWAD competitors centre stage. There will be a few interesting kit choices to make, as the cold and wet conditions are likely to see many people resort to neoprene swim hats, cycle jackets, arm warmers et al. Of course, the rain may stop, but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking!

I’ll hopefully be back with an update on Friday's racing. I won’t be troubling the medallists, but will do the best I can and hope to have some fun. After Colette’s last minute injury, I’m racing for two, as she couldn’t even make the flight to support due to possible DVT risk (see here). Also, two years ago things were not looking too bright for me, (see my other blog here), so just being out doing what I love (even in the wet), has got to be fun.

Good luck to everyone racing. Go GB !!

Wednesday

The Brits are feeling at home here; a) because there are so many (quite possibly larger than the Canadian team?) and b) we arrived to cold, overcast and wet weather! Today (Wednesday) was a little better, dry at least though far from tropical.

For most it was course recce' day. The swim can simply be described as COLD!! The sea is surprisingly pleasant, in the sense that it really isn't too salty, but expect plenty of ice-cream heads and numb hands and feet. Not too sure of water temperature, but is significantly colder than any open water swimming I've done in the UK so far this year. The neoprene hat is likely to see some race action.

The bike is all based around Stanley Park, a very pleasant tree-lined venue. 4*10km laps for the standard distance, and 3*7km for the sprint. Road surface is 'ok' at best, though in parts appeared to be being resurfaced today. Thoughts from our group is that it's easier than expected. Not too technical, sheltered from the wind for all but one short section, and the 'hill' really isn't anything to fear taking around 3 minutes to climb, not too steep, and followed by a long descent.

Dave Chapman was the unfortunate one today, after being knocked off his bike from behind by a car. Bashed, bruised and a visit to hospital, no major damage done but not what you need three days before racing.

Tomorrow (Thursday) sees the elite junior races where our top prospect is probably Kirsty McWilliam who has been racing well this season, including winning the first Corus Elite Series race at GreenPark, and a silver at the European Juniors. For the Age Groupers, last minute preparations plus bike-racking for the sprint distance competitors (including me…).