Lucy Charles-Barclay set to race at Super League Triathlon Arena Games

Renowned as one of the best full-distance athletes in the world, Great Britain’s Lucy Charles-Barclay is setting herself up for an interesting month of racing – after lining up at Challenge Miami next weekend, she’ll take on some of the world’s top short-distance athletes at the Super League Triathlon (SLT) Arena Games in London on March 27. She’ll also compete at the Arena Games event in Rotterdam on April 18.

Formerly one of Great Britain’s top long-distance swimmers, Charles-Barclay came oh-so-close to qualifying for the 2012 Olympics as a swimmer. She turned her sights to triathlon in 2014 at the age of 19. A year later she’d not only qualified for Kona, she won the 18 to 24 age group. She turned pro in 2016 with a third-place finish at Ironman Lanzarote, then won that race a year later. She followed that up with a runner-up finish at the Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt, and the first of three straight runner-up finishes in Kona.

“I have decided to race the SLT Arena Games mainly because I want to test myself in the shorter distance,” she said in a press release from SLT. “I have always had that question mark there having gone straight into long course so it will be interesting to see how I fare against some of the best girls on the ITU [World Triathlon] circuit.”

Reigning World Triathlon world champion Georgia Taylor-Brown is also competing in the Arena Games, which means Charles-Barclay will get her wish in terms of taking on the world’s best.

The other women in the SLT Arena Games field are: Sophie Coldwell, Kate Waugh, Ruth Astle, Beth Potter, Helen Jenkins, Alice Betto, Ilaria Zane, Anna Godoy.

The Arena Games debuted in Rotterdam last year. The athletes swim 300 m in a 50 m pool, then bike 4 km on a trainer and run 1 km on a treadmill connected to the Zwift platform. The order of the events are shuffled through three-different races.