Labossiere earns win at Riding Mountain

Patrick Labossiere is training to go long in a month, but his short-distance speed was enough to win the Riding Mountain Triathlon’s Olympic distance race on Saturday.

The 37-year-old Winnipeg athlete, who is competing in Ironman Wisconsin next month, finished the 1,500-meter swim, 40-km bike, and 10-km run in two hours, 10 minutes, and 15.9 seconds. That put him nearly six minutes clear of second-place finisher Terron Baker and 66 other male finishers in the men’s event.

“I have been training for long courses all year, so I think my top-end speed is not quite there yet, but I use the local races to practice nutrition and a couple of little tidbits on my bike position,” Labossiere said. “(Saturday), I actually practiced running with a water bottle flask, and it worked out quite well. All the little things actually add up to a good race.”

Athletes training for Ironmans traditionally train in longer, less intense workouts, while shorter distances generally require shorter, more strenuous workouts.

On Saturday, he came out of the water in fifth, posted the third-fastest bike split to take the lead, and then dropped the fastest run of the day (38:26.5) for the win.

“Today was a great day,” Labossiere said. “It started off a little cold, but I always love racing here and have a little bit of a back-and-forth battle with Terron Baker, and today was no different. I came out of the bike and heard the announcers say his name right behind me. I got a little nervous, and so I went hard on the bike, and he was right behind me at the turnaround as well.

“I went all gas the whole way back to see if I could break him, and I guess I did some damage because usually he’s a much better runner than me. I guess he suffered, and I held on. It was a good day for me.”

Labossiere did his first race back in 2012 and got more serious about it after COVID. It was his third time doing Riding Mountain and his first win.

“There’s always some young gun that comes to this race,” Labossiere said. “I know it attracts so many athletes, which is kind of why it’s my favourite race. This is my first win.

“It’s very cool. It feels really good. Now that it’s over, it feels really good. Ask me during it, and you get a different answer.”

The women’s winner was Bronwyn Russel, who covered the distance in 2:34:13.5, seven minutes ahead of Kim Hodges in the 26-athlete field.

Patrick Desjardine (1:10:50.9) and Jillian Clarkson (1:18:39.1) won the men’s and women’s sprint distance races, which involve a 750-meter swim, a 20-km bike, and a five-km run.

Tyler Kiselbach (1:16:20.7) won the male Sprint duathlon, with Megan Deck (1:20:28.6) capturing the women’s title, while in the shorter Super Sprint, Kyle Azaransky (38:34.1) and Hayleigh Rasmussen (43:50.4) emerged as the winners.

After being unable to stage the triathlon last summer because he couldn’t put rescue craft in the water — he held a sparsely attended duathlon instead — race director Dave Lipchen was happy to see the event back in its entirety. He lost the race entirely during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

“This is unbelievable,” Lipchen said as athletes crossed the finish nearby. “It’s sort of the same thing we did in 2023 when the rebound (from COVID) finally hit in full effect. It’s good to see everybody coming back. We’re probably another year away from starting to hit the numbers we saw in 2019.

“Once we realized all the obstacles with the smoke and potential changes to wetsuits to mandatory wetsuits, all of a sudden we had a huge spike in the last week or so that brought the race up to around that 340 mark. We were able to adjust on the fly, and I think we’re doing good.”

Labossiere said it was just nice to see the full race back.

“It’s such a pleasure to have a full triathlon,” Labossiere said. “I know that last year was very difficult and a lot of people didn’t want to do a duathlon. It’s still a good competition, but it makes it feel complete having a swim, bike, and run.”

Triathlon Manitoba’s race series ends on Sept. 7 with the Stonewall Triathlon.

Lipchen admitted the race lucked out with its weather, despite a chilly morning, with light winds and sunshine on a day that got steadily warmer. It almost managed to avoid the smoke from northern fires that could have detracted from the event.

Lipchen has also spoken about potentially modifying the swim course when the water gets choppy to keep athletes closer to shore but didn’t have to make that change on Saturday.

“This is actually kind of perfect,” Lipchen said. “The temperature like this holds back the massive congestion that can be around (Wasagaming), especially for a Saturday. The air temperature was super cold, like 10 or 11 this morning — and now we’re getting close to 20.

“The wind held off, which, especially with the new rules on the lake, we wanted to make sure we had as many lifeguards and search and rescue guys as we could to make sure everything was safe.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com