Lusail City hosted first Qatari Diar Triathlon last Friday, 29th of March with some 250 adults and kids taking over the Lusail City. Marina Promenade, next to the Yacht Club triathlon was the main venue and start of the race which went underway at 7:15am.

Bernard McCullagh (Irl) won the main Open Men event with 54 minutes 11 seconds in front of Aday Alvarez (Spa) and Mouhcine Rhaili (Mor). With this victory McCullagh also came on top of the Series standings.

Isora Sosa Caballero (Spa) continued with her clean streak of 4 victories out of 4 races with 1h3m2s and is already winner of the Qatar National Triathlon Series. Second place went to Daniela Sposi (Gbr) and Gerda Maria Dumitru (Rom) came third.

In Veteran categories Enzo Fascinato (Arg) 59m 23s won in Men’s race in front of Manuel Miceli (Ita) and Jody Sanderson (Can). Hilda Allin (Rsa) 1h8m55s was the fastest among Veteran Women in front of Andrea Stadler (Ecu) and Annemarie Kilshaw (Aus).

Triathlon is becoming popular among Qataris. Some of them couldn’t participate on this event, since Samla race, which can be looked in some way as an extreme version of triathlon, just finished last weekend and left many athletes too tired to take on the Qatari Diar Triathlon. The best Qatari was Mubarak Alajji 1h5m44s followed by Abdulla Alhemaidi and Abdulrahman Aljaber, who is the leader in the Series. Nasser Almohannadi came on top in Qatari veteran category, Fahad Al Groon was second and Saoud Almarri was third. The same order stands also in the Series, where Almohannadi claimed four victories in four races and can be declared as a winner of this season’s Series. Caroline van Aartrijk won among Qatari Veteran Women and is already a winner of the 2018/2019 Series.

Team relay competition saw a staggering 20 teams taking on the challenge. The fastest time of 57m 59s was done by Ismail Dergaa / James Moffat / Adil Adnan Faqruddin.

Thani Al Zarra; board member at Qatar Cycling and Triathlon Federation was positive after the event: “Lusail City proved to be one of the best venues for triathlon in Qatar, with prospects of future cooperation between Qatari Diar and Qatar Cycling and Triathlon Federation. We are extremely happy to have found a common interest with the fellow Qatari Diar organisation and are looking forward to new events, whether triathlon or cycling related.”

The fifth and final event in Qatar National Triathlon Series, “The Pearl Qatar Triathlon”, will happen on 19th of April. For more information about the Series, results and points standing visit  www.qtriseries.com