Colorado Triathlon Team Rebuilds Faster Than Expected
Broderick’s Win and Wane’s Podium Spot Pace the Team to Third
By Adam Hodges
race day story | additional coverage | results | team history
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Although Ricci is an elite level triathlon coach and makes a living helping athletes achieve their potential in the sport, he needed to prove to his collegiate athletes that the training he was asking them to do over the winter would pay off later in the spring.
Collegiate racers line up for the start
Photo courtesy of USA Triathlon
“As the winter wore on, each time trial we did just proved the training was working and the team was getting faster and faster,” said Ricci. “Being a new coach you have to prove your methods are working and when I showed them the results of how they had swam the 1200-yard time trial at the same pace as the 500-yard time trial only twelve weeks earlier, I think they started to believe the work was paying off.
“This crew did everything I asked them to do this season and they never complained. It's truly an incredible group of student athletes. It seemed the harder I made the workouts, the more they liked it and the more the attendance at workouts increased.”
The road to Lubbock included a stop at the Collegiate Mountain Conference Championships in Lake Havasu, Arizona on March 21. The Buffaloes proved that when it comes to their own neighborhood, they are the fastest team on the block. The team dominated the race, with Cédric Wane winning the men’s individual title, accompanied by Todd Darlington’s third place. The women took the first two podium spots, with Ashley Walker claiming the win and Heidi Spees taking the runner-up spot. When the team scores were tallied, CU swept the men’s team title, the women’s team title, and the combined team title.
They accomplished those results at Havasu without tapering. That race, after all, was simply a tune-up for the main showdown that would take place a month later in Lubbock.
“Even though we were improving—after looking at our time trials and how we did at Lake Havasu—we were on pace to be in about the top ten among the men's teams at nationals,” explained Ricci.
Ricci was particularly impressed with the women’s 1-2 performance at Lake Havasu, which was without their top racer, Jessica Broderick. As a result, Ricci said, “I was anticipating a good showing at nationals [for the women].” Somewhere in the top five, he figured.
Jessica Broderick, a freshman Integrative Physiology major from Middlebury, Connecticut, began racing triathlons three years ago. She caught the bug from watching her mother compete in the sport. “I fell in love with the atmosphere,” she said.