Kiwi tri relay team 13th

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

The state of the River Seine cost Gisborne’s Tayler Reid and his New Zealand teammates a better position in the Paris Olympic test mixed relay on Sunday.

All strong swimmers, the Kiwi quartet of Reid, Nicole van der Kaay, Dylan McCullough and Brea Roderick finished 13th in the race which was reduced to a duathlon because of unsafe water samples taken earlier in the morning.

Germany won the race — a 1.35km run (reduced to 900m for lead-out Reid), 5.8km cycle and 1.8km run  — in a sprint finish with Great Britain, with Belgium third.

Reid was 13th when he tagged van der Kaay, who got the team up to seventh and they were sitting eighth when McCullough handed over to Roderick.

Reid placed 25th in the elite men’s individual race earlier in the weekend. He clocked 1 hour 43 minutes 10 seconds — well behind winner Alex Yee of Great Britain in 1:41.02.

Kiwi star Hayden Wilde pulled out on the run after injuring himself while cycling to the race.

Yee’s win put him top of the World Triathlon Championship Series with Wilde second with the Grand Final in Pontevedra, Spain, the last event.