Rivals unite as team triathlon throws up unusual combinations

Dont worry Jack. Well get you one on Thursday, said Daniel Hoy as he arranged his silver medal for a photo shoot ahead of the mixed relay triathlon at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.

But Jack is not a New Zealand teammate, but rather Australias Jack van Stekelenburg.

A New Zealander offering to help an Australian win a medal? Has the world gone mad?

But it is the reality for Oceania 1, the four-person mixed relay team that also features womens gold medallist Brittany Dutton and Elizabeth Stallard.

Meanwhile, from the other side of the world, traditional rivals France, Germany and Great Britain will team up, alongside Denmark.

Ben is going to run us home, Emil Deleuran Hansen from Denmar said.

Im going to try, anyway, Ben Dijkstra from Great Britain replied.

Mens gold medallist Dijkstra and bronze medallist Hansen will be joined in Europe 1 by womens bronze medallist Emilie Morier of France and fourth-placed Kristin Ranwig from Germany.

These are just some of the fascinating combinations created by the mixed triathlon competition.

It features teams representing continents, formed by combining the top two ranked men, and top two ranked women from each continent in the individual races.

The next top pair from each gender form a second team for their continent, and so on, until there are not enough athletes, at which stage world teams are created.

Thursdays race at the Xuanwu Lake Triathlon Venue will feature five Europe teams, four America teams, three Asia teams, one Africa team, one Oceania team, and two World teams.

The Oceania team is confident it has the edge in terms of cameraderie.

We work well with the kiwis [New Zealanders]. Theyre good friends and we train well together, Dutton said. It will be a good race on Thursday and I think well do well.

Each triathlete will complete his or her own shorter triathlon 250m swim, 6.6km bike and 1.8km run before tagging the next athlete.

Dijkstra says everyone needs to be extremely careful at the transition, which is something he knows very well, after a protest in the individual race threatened his eventual gold medal.

Theres going to be eight transitions, so four times as many opportunities for infringements to occur. But hopefully well have a cleaner transition, maybe on my part. Well try and prevent that from happening, so that once we cross the line we actually know the result, Dijkstra said.

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