Your Oxford
Get involved: send your photos, videos, news & views by texting 'OXFORD NEWS' to 80360 or email »
TRIATHLON: Lidbury strikes gold
12:40pm Monday 12th May 2008
Emma-Kate Lidbury produced a career-best performance to win gold at the European Triathlon Championships in Portugal on Sunday.
The Oxfordshire athlete saw off hundreds of rivals to storm home by almost ten minutes in a staggering display in an event that did not include the elite of the sport.
The 28-year-old, who is sponsored by bike and triathlon retailer Wiggle.co.uk, completed the 1,500m swim in 19mins 51secs, the 40km bike ride in 1hr 14.40 before recording a rapid 37.53 split for the 10km run.
It gave her a winning margin of 9mins 43secs - a huge distance.
Lidbury admitted she exceeded all of her expectations.
"I knew that if things went well then I had a great chance of gold," she said.
"But to do it by the margin I did is just amazing. I never thought I would get that sort of time."
Lidbury, an Oxford Mail reporter, will now look for more glory in the World Triathlon Championships in Vancouver, Canada, next month.
"I felt really good and everything fell into place nicely," she said.
"After about 20k of the bike ride I knew I had something like a five minute lead, and I was just thinking that I would have to be a real fool to throw away a lead like that!
"I just kept on pushing and things just all went according to plan - I'm really pleased with my run, that was a quick time."
Last year she won bronze in the women's 25-29 age group at the World Championships in Hamburg, Germany, and will be looking to improve on that.
She added: "Looking at my times, I am so far ahead of where I thought I would be at this time of the year which is great.
"I will just keep on training hard and hopefully continue to get better and better ahead of the World Champ- ionships."
Editor's choice
The Mole and Chicken, Easington, near Thame
One of the pictures on this page gives a good impression of the delights to be enjoyed at the Mole and Chicken on one of those sunny days that now seem as far as can be from our present situation.
Early taste of Christmas wine
Next week is The Oxford Times Wine Club Christmas Tasting and, with just four weeks to go until Christmas Day, it is an excellent opportunity to sample a specially-selected range of wines for the festive season.
Dylan Moran: New Theatre, Oxford
‘I was the first person to discover that if you infected a person with Marmite, he would stand up and bark at the moon.” “Everybody under the age of 35 has the intelligence of raspberry jam.” “Children can hear vegetables hiding.”
Sleeping Beauty, Chipping Norton Theatre
There’s nothing King Couer-de-Loup likes more than a good battle: “We’ll march on King Florizel’s wet and wicked army,” he proclaims. His Queen is not so sure, however. She would rather her husband stayed around: there’s the christening of their daughter Princess Aurora to arrange for a start. And he certainly can’t go out and fight looking like that: “Your chain mail’s got a ladder in it,” she wails.
Emma-Kate Lidbury won European title
In this section
Sponsored Links
Local Advertisers
Local Information
Enter your postcode, town or place name
