Air Canada strikes again. Olympic gold medalist Flora Duffy’s missed opportunity at 70.3 Mont-Tremblant
The airport is absolute chaos. There are bags everywhere.
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
“Missing bike,” Flora Duffy wrote on Instagram, “No race. No Worlds slot. Very frustrating weekend. Thanks Dan for driving through the night to search for my bike and the endless calls to Air Canada.”
We reported yesterday that Flora Duffy didn’t end up starting at Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant. Last night the Olympic gold medalist from Bermuda explained in a video why she was forced to make the call.
“I flew on a direct flight from Denver to Montreal on Friday and my bags made it, but my bike and my disc wheel did not,” she said. “I was hopeful it would be put on the flight the next day, which only arrived in Montreal in the early hours of Sunday morning. Dan went down – he drove the 90 minutes from Mont-Tremblant to Montreal to search for my bike super early this morning, but it didn’t make it on the flight. My disc wheel did so he picked that up. He spent hours there just trying to see if my bike was there. The airport is absolute chaos, there are bags everywhere.”
“People ask why I didn’t borrow a bike,” she continued. “To be honest there wasn’t that much time to sort out a bike, and of course you need shoes, cleats, pedals, dialling the position and I wasn’t comfortable with riding a piece of equipment that was that foreign to me for 90 km. I know my body and I know that not be a good thing for me in the long run. And then running a half marathon off riding a position that I was not comfortable in, I knew that would lead to bigger problems. It was too much of a risk for me.”
“It’s very disapointing for me because this was a big goal of mine for this year to qualify for the 70.3 world champs post Olympics, I was really looking forward to mixing up my racing, exploring some long course,” Duffy said. “But, I’ve tried twice now to qualify, I tried in Chattanooga but I picked up COVID and I could not start. And now my bike doesn’t arrive for Mont-Tremblant and the window for qualification ends in two weeks and I’m racing in Hamburg at the World Triathlon event. So that’s my attempt at 70.3 worlds done, but I guess I’ll try again next year. Big congrats to everyone who raced today. This looks like an amazing venue, amazing course. I ran the run course today, at midday, it was very warm.”
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Duffy had pulled out of the World Triathlon Championship Series race in Montreal to focus on the 70.3 race in Mont-Tremblant. Georgia Taylor-Brown, who won the event in Montreal this weekend, never received her bag, which Air Canada left in Heathrow Airport.
