Olympic triathlete Emma Snowsill is to compete in a relay race at the Yilan Triathlon Championships tomorrow, making her the first Olympic gold medalist to join the event.
The 34-year-old Australian retired last year, having won golds at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, as well as the International Triathlon Union World Championship in 2003, 2005 and 2006.
The competition in Yilan is to be her first since retiring.
She is to team up with two members of Columbia Threadneedle Investments, the sponsor of the championships, running 10km as part of the relay.
Snowsill arrived on Wednesday and spoke to the media at a news conference yesterday afternoon.
She said she was not concerned about the humidity in Taiwan affecting her performance.
“The weather is certainly different in different parts of the world. Fortunately, I grew up in Australia in a region where the weather is somewhat similar to Taiwan’s in the summer time,” she said.
“However, I have always enjoyed competing in hot and humid weather, which my competitors in Europe did not enjoy as much. I have always found this weather to be advantageous to me, such as the races in Beijing and Japan,” she added.
Commenting on how winning an Olympic gold medal has changed her life, Snowsill said that she did not experience much change personally and tried to keep her life as normal as possible.
The biggest change is that more people now know what triathlon is, which is important because people in Australia long anticipated a gold medal in triathlon since its induction as an Olympic sport in 2000, she said.
Snowsill said that the most challenging part of training for a triathlon is dividing time between disciplines and fulfilling training requirements.
For people competing at a professional level, they can over-train themselves, which is detrimental to their performance, she said.
Snowsill said she is passionate about triathlon, adding that it is a sport to which a lot of people can relate.
“It is three sports, and most people know how to do one, most likely two,” she said. “It is also a very social sport, and you can connect with people in a different way. You also have a large triathlon community around the world.”
Snowsill met with Taiwanese triathletes Wei Cheng-chan (魏振展) and Chang Chia-hao (張家豪) at the news conference.
Wei coaches many young athletes, while Chang, 15, started training when he was 10 years old and recently won a gold medal in a triathlon event in Japan.
Snowsill said that the most important task for a triathlon coach is to maintain open, two-way communication with the athlete and to give careful and thorough instructions.
“The big part of this communication is to understand each individual athlete and their requirements or other commitments in life. If you look at this from a professional point of view, people who help you through the journey need to take into account different aspects of your life and how they impact your training and races. Aside from explaining carefully and thoroughly what they are going to teach, they also need to understand there are learning curves and learn to embrace them, an important part of climbing to the top,” she said.
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