Air Force wins triathlon championship

  • Published
SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) --  The Air Force team won the 2004 Armed Forces Triathlon Championship held May 12 to 16 at Naval Base Ventura County, Calif.

This armed forces championship is an Olympic-distance course at the base’s Point Mugu. The course includes a 1,500-meter (0.93-mile) swim, a 40-kilometer (25-mile) bicycle route and a 10-kilometer (6-mile) run. Team results are based on the raw scoring times of the team’s top eight male and four female competitors.

The Navy’s Tim O’Donnell won the event with a time of 1 hour, 51 minutes, 9 seconds, setting the course record for this championship. Matthew Nuffort was the top Air Force finisher (fourth overall, behind an Army and an open competitor) with a time of 1:56:49. Air Force participant William Poteet finished with a time of 2:01:24, good for ninth overall and eighth military finisher.

The remaining Air Force scoring times for the men’s division were Geoffrey Cleveland 2:02:17; Robert Wieland, 2:03:53; Richard Sumrall, 2:04:58; Michael Berquist, 2:06:03; Michael Foster, 2:06:31; and Christopher Nagy, 2:06:45.

The Air Force men’s times left the team 16 minutes behind the Navy and 10 minutes behind the Army.

The Army’s Heidi Grimm was the first woman to cross the finish line, with a time of 2:07:14. Air Force’s Camilla Stock was the second female finisher with a time of 2:09:12. She was followed by teammate Lara Coppinger at 2:11:28.

The final two scoring times for the Air Force were Abigail White at 2:17:29, and Erika Foster, 2:20:20. These women’s times resulted in an accumulative time of 25:24:69, moving the Air Force team past both the Navy (25:38:88) and the Marine Corps (26:12:83).

The Army team failed to qualify for the team results when one of their competitors took a spill in her practice run resulting in a broken collar bone, and another of their competitors experienced bicycle problems on the course during the championship.

Nuffort, Stock, Coppinger, and White all earned berths on the combined Armed Forces Triathlon Team that will compete in the 2004 Conseil International du Sport Militaire Triathlon Championship held June 4 to 8 in Belfort, France.