Post-Race UCLA Triathlon: Nationals

UCLA Club Sports

Post-Race UCLA Triathlon: Nationals

9/18/2024 1:10:00 PM

To close out their season, UCLA embarked on a Mission (to) Viejo for USAT's Collegiate Club National Championships. The competition featured three race distances: sprint, olympic, and mixed relay.

1) Sprint: 750 meter lake swim, 20 kilometer hilly bike, 5k rolling run, and drafting permitted.

2) Olympic: 1500-meter lake swim, 40-kilometer hilly bike, and 10-kilometer rolling run.

3) Mixed relay: 300 or 250-meter lake swim, 4-kilometer bike, 800-meter or 1 kilometer run, 2 men and 2 women athletes per team.

With their luggage intact, the Bruins Nationals experience was already a leg up on last year.

Nationals began at 7:00 AM on Saturday, April 13th with a bang in the men's draft legal. Coming out of Transition 2 in third place, Edoardo Leone took advantage of the hills on the run course (which he split in 14:55) to take the lead and cross the line first in an overall time of 55:25. Also competing in this event for UCLA was Emiliano Olivio Cauberghs (40th, 1:02:29) who posted consistent splits across the three legs.

Next to enter the water were the women in their draft legal sprint race. Kayla Kashima exited the water first for the Bruins with a really strong swim, which was followed up by Josie Goodson posting an impressive run. Josie finished in 20th (1:04:52) followed by Kayla in 21st (1:05:20), a solid showing from the women's team.

For the last race of Day 1, UCLA Triathlon took on the mixed team relay. The Bruins lined up with Edoardo Leone starting off, followed by Julia Martin in the second leg, Marius Genton in the third leg, and Cadence Chang anchoring. Edo's first leg involved a lengthened 300-meter swim while Cadence finished off with a 1-kilometer rather than 800-meter run. UCLA finished 11th out of 44 teams with an overall time of 1:04:17, a great improvement from last year's 16th place.

On Day 2, the Bruins took on the Olympic distance, a long and grueling affair over a hilly course. Edoardo Leone's eighth place finish (1:57:29) in the men's event won him the men's individual combined classification, crowning him the overall winner across both the Sprint and Olympic events. This marks UCLA Triathlon's first win at Nationals since the competition merged undergraduate and graduate athletes. In the women's event, Josie Goodson was again UCLA's best-placed athlete coming in 31st place (2:27:49). Josie finished 18th in the women's individual combined classification and Kayla finished 20th. Julia Martin and Lily Aronovitz both finished in the top 50 of the women's Olympic event and were joined by Kayla and Aliyah Anderson in the top five Bruin finishers in that event. Emi also completed both Sprint and Olympic events and finished 32nd in the men's combined classification. Emi was joined by Marius Genton, Nathan Montanez, and Jerry Shi to round out the top 5 Bruins in the men's Olympic event.

Both the women's and men's teams finished 8th in the team score, and UCLA Triathlon finished 7th overall in the combined team score out of 80 teams! UCLA Triathlon would also like to thank its many generous donors for their contributions towards this year's great success at Nationals!

Olympic, Classic, Men's Results:

8th Edoardo Leone 1:57:29

70th Emiliano Olivo Cauberghs 2:08:30

72nd Marius Genton 2:08:41

123rd Nathan Montanez 2:14:22

303rd Jerry Shi 2:32:44

318th Yasha Niyazov 2:34:03

462nd Austin Liu 2:52:59

491st Dennis Gavrilenko 2:59:29

500th Waleed Alzarooni 3:01:38

502nd William Zhang 3:02:00

515th Ariv Gupta 3:06:40