TEIGNMOUTH triathlete Donald Brooks has stormed his way to more triathlon silverware – smashing a course record by seven minutes in the process.

The Long Course weekend is an Ironman distance triathlon held over three days. The 2.4-mile swim took place on Friday evening, followed by an 112-mile bike on Saturday morning cumulating with a 26.2 mile marathon on Sunday morning.

The event attracts more than 4,000 athletes to the town of Tenby, in Wales, for the weekend with other single discipline events also taking place.

In order to be a contender and receive the coveted fourth medal, all three long distance events must be completed.

Brooks had not tackled this distance since 2015 as he has been concentrating on shorter triathlon distances from sprint up to half Ironman, so he was going into the event not knowing how he would hold up over the longer distances.

Friday evening saw 1,500 swimmers line up on Tenby’s north beach to tackle the windy and choppy conditions with a two-lap course, which included an ‘Aussie exit’ where swimmers exit the water Brooks completed the swim course in a time of 58:11, giving him fifth position overall going into day two, having a deficit of just over five minutes to the race leader.

The top 10 male and female athletes are treated to a showcase ramp start for the cycle early on Saturday morning. This really is a spectacle, cycling down the ramp with flames going off on either side.

Nearly 2,000 athletes tackled the challenging bike course. Brooks made his way up to the front of the race pack where he found other athletes to work with.

This made the race quite tactical as competitors knew working together would be to the groups advantage, but it’s an individual race with athletes on different accumulative times.

This provided lots of surging for the first 25 miles, until Donald and three others broke away from the pack. These four stayed together until the 90 mile point where two could not maintain the pace Brooks was setting, then with 15 miles to go the final athlete also dropped off.

Brooks then used his time trailing skills, honed at Mid Devon Cycling Club, to push hard knowing this is where he could gain valuable time on his fellow competitors.

The last few miles are through the seaside towns of Wisemans Bridge and Saundersfoot where the crowds and atmosphere were uplifting and kept Donald pushing hard to Tenby’s town centre where he crossed the finish line in 5:13:30 more than five minutes ahead of his nearest rival.

This was enough to put him in the overall lead going into day three with a three-minute lead over second place and seven minutes over third place.

Sunday morning, the final day for the long course athletes, consisted of a hilly marathon out to Pembroke and back with nearly 2,000ft of climbing, with the majority of this coming in the second half!

Donald, knowing his advantage over his competition, stayed with the lead group which started by meandering the streets and crowds of Tenby before heading out of town.

At 5km the top three were still together. After 8km Donald realised that the athlete that was standing second overall, three minutes behind him, had fallen back so he kept pace with the Belgian athlete who he knew he had a seven-minute lead over. The pace was higher than Donald was comfortable with and, knowing that the second half was going to be hard, he eased off after the halfway point and ran on his own.

With 5km to go a motorbike crew informed Donald that he had been instructed to escort him into Tenby as he was going to be the overall winner.

This allowed Donald the opportunity to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the final few miles as he finished in a time of 2:41:55, winning the overall event in an accumulative time of 8:53:36 and setting a new course record by seven minutes.

Later that afternoon was the presentation ceremony for the 363 athletes from more than 900 starters that had completed the three long distance disciplines who were rewarded with the fourth medal.

Brooks then made his way down through all these athletes to the podium where he received his winner’s trophy and an Erdinger shower!