Domination was the theme at the elite end of the 2018 Bintan Triathlon Festival action last Saturday as Andy Wibowo and Jennifer Zenker put on swim-bike-run masterclasses to win the men’s and women’s Olympic Distance (OD) races in style.

It was a third Bintan Triathlon OD triumph for Indonesian superstar Wibowo adding to the titles he claimed in 2015 and 2016, and the second for Zenker, as the German successfully defended the crown she won in 2017. The calibre of Zenker’s performance on Saturday was emphasised by the fact that she was the second-fastest competitor overall, with only Wibowo posting a quicker time.

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Teams from the Specialized Roval Mavericks and the country of Myanmar walked away with the titles and some big cash prizes as the latest edition of the OCBC Cycle Speedway Championships thrilled the crowds during nine rounds of racing at the Singapore Sports Hub last Saturday. However, while the event was as a success, its criterium-relay format – specifically the transition zone where the team handovers took place – once again threw up some problems which saw technical time penalties rather than bike racing skill and speed decide some of the major placing.
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The TriFactor Series returned on Sunday for its 10th anniversary and kicked the special 2018 edition off with the TriFactor Bike and CycleRun Challenge in an exciting downtown Singapore location centred on the Nicoll Highway. From a race card jam-packed with events of different distances and formats, the main multisports winners were Alan Blackie (Integrated Riding) and Vicki Hill (APS) in the Long Distance CycleRun Challenge, while among the pure cyclists, it was Brian Ng (Matador Racing) and Serene Lee (Masslandster International Women’s Cycling Team) who prevailed in the 49km Bike Race.
 
Click on this link to read the full race report. Action photos courtesy of Zan Ang.

Singapore’s mountain bikers enjoyed a double dose of racing action last weekend with Dimas Pamungkas taking the main downhill honours at the Kent Ridge Carnival on Saturday, while Riyadh Hakim struck gold for two days in a row, claiming cross-country wins at both Kent Ridge and Jungle Cross II on the Sunday.
 
With its well-established Jungle Cross series, cycling events outfit Cycosports has provided Singapore’s mountain bikers with a steady stream of competitive action over the past few years, but those races at the Centaurs Trail in Turf City have been overwhelmingly geared towards the cross-country fraternity. However, that changed last Saturday when Cycosports staged the inaugural Kent Ridge Carnival, which saw downhill racing take centre stage.

Click on this link to read the full double race report.

The 2018 MetaSprint Series ended on Sunday with a hugely competitive MetaSprint Triathlon, which saw defending champion Colin O’Shea clinch the men’s title with a scintillating time of 58 minutes and 30 seconds. As fast as his performance was, though, it wasn’t enough to win the Champion of Champions crown, that honour going to Jennifer Zenker, who put in a dominating wire-to-wire performance to not only defend her women’s title but also hold off all the men for the second year in a row.
 
Now in its 11th year, the MetaSprint Series shows no sign of losing its appeal with almost 2,000 competitors and hundreds more supporters and spectators flocking to the race village yesterday on what was a beautiful Sunday morning at the East Coast Park, the traditional home of triathlon in Singapore. As well as the sprint-distance contests which give the MetaSprint Series its name, also on the program were the usual Discovery, Youth and Kids races, and new for this year the Kids Scootathlon. Click on this link to read the full race report.

The OCBC Cycle Singapore National Team Time Trial Championships returned to the Tanah Merah Coastal Road on Sunday on what was a gala occasion for the Singapore road cycling scene. There were many winners, but a quartet from the Allied World Kemp Technologies racing team claimed the most prestigious title when they swept to victory in the Elite Men’s Open Quad category. In the Elite Women’s Quad, it was Anza Cycling who took the honours.

A further 105 teams did battle for the other 13 Quad and Duo titles that were up for grabs. That’s an astonishing number of cyclists and shows the rude health of the sport in Singapore. Click on this link to read the full race report.

At the conclusion of three days of thrilling action on Sunday, the Tour de Bintan crowned 14 general classification champions, awarded 14 UCI jerseys and sent over 200 racers home with hard-earned tickets to the 2018 world amateur cycling championships.

While the 2018 edition marked the eighth running of the Tour de Bintan, it was just the second time that Southeast Asia’s premier amateur cycling tour also incorporated two qualifying races for the UCI Gran Fondo World Championships, a.k.a., those world amateur championships. The move by race organisers MetaSport to join the UCI Gran Fondo World Series (GFWS) in 2017 appears to have been an unqualified success, with vastly increased participatory numbers for the Tour de Bintan last year and then another boost in numbers for the just-concluded race. Click here to read the full race report.

Ben Arnott of the Specialized Roval Mavericks claimed the elite Men’s Open title at the 2018 Tour of Phuket on Sunday at the end of three days of hard racing in southern Thailand, while Sarah Schnieder (MatadorRacing) was crowned the champion in the Women’s Open contest.

The successful pair were just two of the approximately 200 riders who took part in the third edition of the three-day race organised by the leading cycling events outfit Cycosports. Most of the cyclists flew into the renowned holiday destination that is Phuket for the race and most no doubt returned to their homes in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, other parts of Thailand and elsewhere around the region highly satisfied with their experience.

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Power on the bike was the key to success in Sunday’s MetaSprint Series Duathlon at Singapore’s F1 Village, as Anna Eberhardt and Alan Blakie built decisive leads on the second leg of the run-bike-run race on their way to clinching the women’s and men’s titles respectively. Eberhardt enjoyed a double victory, as the world-class duathlete easily held off the men in the Equaliser “battle of the sexes” to be crowned Champion of Champions.

Even at that early hour, the race village was already buzzing for one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the annual multisports calendar. Set amid a backdrop of the F1 Pit Building, the Singapore Flyer, Marina Bay and the stunning city skyline, it’s easy to see why the MetaSprint Duathlon has such a special feel.

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With a stacked field of elite athletes the 2018 MetaSport Aquathlon promised to be an exciting affair and it certainly delivered as Tim Cosulich produced a scintillating performance to win both the Men’s Elite and the Champion of Champions titles by the narrowest of margins at Sentosa’s Palawan Beach yesterday.

Anna Eberhardt took the Women’s Elite crown and was so close to winning the Equalizer “battle of the sexes”, only being caught by Cosulich with 500m to go.

Race organisers MetaSport must keep a weather genie in their office as year in, year out the sun shines down out of clear blue skies on the Aquathlon, the traditional opening leg of the MetaSprint Series.  Click here to read the full race report.