Kyle Jones talks to us about his first career ITU win

Victoria’s Kyle Jones (by way of Oakville) won his first career ITU race at Ixtapa on Saturday. We caught up with him and to find out what happened and to discover what’s next?

“I had a bit of a rough swim, exiting the water further back than I would have liked, but still in the main group.

There were 4 of us that worked really well together at the start of the bike and we were able to close the gap to the small lead group within 5k. It ended up being one big group. It was a rolling course with a couple 180’s so there were a few attacks, but for the most part the pace was pretty controlled. I stayed near the front the entire ride to stay out of trouble.

Coming into T2 I was well positioned and started the run in about 6th place. I ran conservatively (due to the heat) for the first 1k but was able to get to the front. Manny Huerta and I ran together for 3 laps and opened up a good lead on the rest of the field.

At the start of the last lap I made a surge and was able to open up a gap on Manny. I ran strong for the next 2k and it was enough to get the win. It was hot out there but I used all the aid stations in order to stay as cool as possible. My coach (Jon Brown) had me do some heat training leading into this race so that helped a lot too.

I’m off to Asia now for 2 more continental cup races. The goal right now is to secure enough ITU points so I will have guarantee entry into the WCS series races. I had surgery in the fall, then crashed on the bike early this year and broke my hand so I had to delay the start of my season, but unfortunately, since I didn’t race my ranking dropped and I’ve been on wait lists for Madrid and Kitzbuhel.

My next world cup race will be Edmonton, and then hopefully I’ll be off to Hamburg for the WCS race and then onto London WCS.”