Leading British triathletes Kate Waugh and Max Stapley have both had the best seasons of their careers following a move away from the esteemed Leeds Performance Centre to train under the guidance of Dr Paulo Sousa at the beginning of 2023.
In moving away from Yorkshire, the pair made a decision very few British short-course athletes make, to pursue triathlon excellence outside of the UK.
Sharing the details on their move on the Talking Triathlon Podcast (watch the full episode below), Waugh and Stapley explained their decision and spoke about what they have already learned in their new training group.
Waugh had lost her love for triathlon
Waugh explained: “I was based in Leeds for five years. I was studying there and I was with the performance centre in Leeds, but for the last 18 months [before leaving] I had started to feel like I was in a bit of a rut, I wasn’t enjoying training and I wasn’t really enjoying anything about triathlon any more.”
Adding that the situation was beginning to take a toll on her happiness, Kate said it was not until Stapley spent his first winter training in Leeds that the couple decided to make a major change.
“I had a couple of good results, but it wasn’t doing anything for me, because I wasn’t happy in my day-to-day life. Max and I started dating back in 2021 and he moved to Leeds, did his first winter in Leeds and as a guy who grew up in Australia, he looked like he was about to breakdown, I felt like I had made my boyfriend into a shell of a human after that winter and we knew then that we needed a change.
“At the end of the year, we just said that we had to make some changes, for our happiness and wellbeing and do something different, which was when we got offered a place in the squad of Dr Paulo Sousa and we kind of upped and left in two weeks. That was the biggest change we made this year and it seems like it had paid off so far.”
Citing the weather as a big factor that forced their hand, Waugh expressed her disbelief that some of the best athletes in the world weren’t going abroad to warmer winter climates to train and instead forced themselves through a winter training block in Yorkshire.
“I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand why people would freeze throughout the winter, it is not necessary to do that to be a successful athlete. I couldn’t get my head around it in Leeds why you would put yourself through that, the injury risk is higher, you get ill more often and it just wasn’t for me.”
“It’s not the position I wanted to be in” – Stapley
Stapley, who switched representation from Australia to Great Britain this year and finished sixth at the World U23 Championship last year, said he knew Leeds was not the place for him to reach his full potential.
“I think there were a lot of things that changed when I first got to Leeds versus where it was 12 months later. A lot of people had left, Alistair [Brownlee] and Jonny [Brownlee] were training with a different squad.
“You never got to train with them and it got to the point where I was going to be the lead athlete at 23 years old in a performance centre, and I just thought to myself that it wasn’t the position I wanted to be in.
“I don’t want to be leading, I want to be led, as I don’t yet have that much experience or the results, despite having a bit and it’s not the position I want to be in, I wanted someone to tell me how I could progress and I think that’s what me and Kate got from Paulo.”
Reiterating Waugh’s point about the weather and climate in Leeds, Stapley revealed that one day in the build up to the World U23 Championships last year, things just became too much.
“There was one day, preparing for Worlds in Abu Dhabi, someday like October 25th, where we were doing a ride on this 90 minute loop we did every Monday, the Germans were in Mauritius, the French were in the UAE and I was riding in -2 degrees and just threw my bike in a field and said f*** this.”
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