Jan van Berkel comes closer to his big goal (16.07.2011)

With a 18th place at the ITU World Championship Series race in Hamburg Jan showed his good shape and came closer to a qualification slot for the Olympic Games 2012. His preaparation in the Swiss mountains worked well.

The 10th edition of Hamburg's race attracted 250.000 specators. So Jan was more than motivated to race. His swim worked well and he came out of the water in the second group just 20 seconds behind the later winner from Australia, Brad Kahlefeldt. Though there was a handicap on the swim course. The athletes had to swim underneath a bridge where they could not see anything. That ended up in a affray which nobody liked except the spectators. As Jan's distance to the lead was tiny it did not take a long time that he reached the leading group on the bike. There were many turns on the course which made it pretty dangerous. He was lucky and came to the transition to the run without any crash. On the 7th place he could start the last discipline. His desire was big to run as fast as the leading guys. But he was smart enough to safe some eneryg for the second half of the 10 km which he could finsih in a time of 31min10sec. That meant the 18th place overall.

Jan is more than happy with that result. It shows that his training strategy works. "My shape inproved in the last weeks and I feel to be on the right way. It was another good race under the best 20 in the world. Now I will focus on the recovery."