Posted: August 7, 2004

Triathlon: Tamm third at short-course Estonian Championships

TALLINN, ESTONIA (August 2, 2004) Less than a month after his 8:47.09 win at the 2004 Long Distance Triathlon World Championship for Firefighters, in Roth, Germany, professional triathlete Margus Tamm (EST) rode and ran second fastest of the day to take the third-place podium spot at yesterday’s Estonian Championships for Olympic distance triathlon. It was one week after his win at a Tallinn sprint triathlon.

“My race was good. I was able to push hard on the bike course to make a big enough difference from the next competitors before the run,” said Tamm, a firefighter-rescuer at Tallinn’s main airport. “It was actually very good, because at the end there were only 11 seconds until the fourth place man.” He still felt some residual of his ultra-distance race in his legs. The top-level competition was strong with 2008 Olympics hopeful, 21-year-old Prit Ailt and strong cyclist Ain-Alar Juhanson taking first and second place, respectively.

Unfortunately, local weather had not been favorable. Two days of rain chilled the small lake to 19 or 20 degrees and made the 10 km forest run course (1.7 km loops) quite soft – only about 300m was on the road. Race day clouds, light showers and 17.5-degree temperatures kept the pace a bit more tepid as well. Typical to northern Estonia, the bike course was mostly flat, and took the athletes twice out-and-back.

Tamm, a seven-time star in Roth, finished eighth overall in 2003, in 8:42:00. He was also second overall to Lothar Leder in the World’s Best triathlon series, which tests an athlete at Olympic, half-iron and iron distances all in one month’s time. Tamm races around the globe, including the Ironman World Championship, in Hawaii, and Strongman Triathlon, in Miyakojima, Japan.

Tamm’s next race will likely be in September, at Ironman Wisconsin.

Estonian Championships (1.5km S/40km B/10km R) - August 1, 2004 Estonia

1. Priit Ailt  1:58.33,6 (17.58,1/62.27,4/38.08,1)
2. Ain-Alar Juhanson 1:59.44,5 (21.41,2/59.14,1/38.49,2)
3. Margus Tamm 2:01.08,2 (21.02,4/61.50,5/38.15,3)

From: Steve “Hammy” Handwerker, slhcomm@hotmail.com.