A pair of Okanagan athletes and their coach will represent Canada at a World Cup CamTri event in Salinas, Ecuador on July 1.
Brock Hoel of Kelowna and Keagan Ingram of Summerland — along with Luke Way, coach of the Kelowna-based Balance Point Racing team and the Mission Group Junior Development Program — leave on Saturday for Ecuador where they’ll train for a week leading up to the event featuring many of the top young (16 and 17 years old) triathletes in the world.
Both Hoel, 17, and Ingram, 15, earned a berth on the team — along with Solen Woods of Calgary and Alexandrine Coursol of Montreal — on the strength of their results at the national triathlon championships in 2017 and by reaching national team standards confirmed by the International Triathlon Union.
Hoel, coming off an outstanding 2017 season, highlighted by a fourth-place individual finish at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg, says he’s training to win and “is excited to get some international experience” in Ecuador.
Meanwhile Ingram says he’s “just trying to see how high up the field I can get and gain some experience.”
The race will consist of a 750-metre ocean swim, a 20-km bike through the streets of Salinas and a 5-km run.
The two Valley athletes will also compete at the World Cup CamTri event in Magog, Que. later this summer and at the Kelowna Apple Triathlon in August. If all goes well, Hoel will go on to the world junior championships in Australia while Ingram is aiming to compete at the youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.
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