The men get triathlon underway at the Rio Olympic Games with their race set to go at 2am New Zealand time tomorrow (Friday) morning with Tony Dodds and Ryan Sissons amongst the field set to dive into the waters off Copacabana Beach for the 1500m swim, 40km bike and 10km run journey to the finish line.
There has been much talk about the course with a swim off the beach at Copacabana followed by a challenging bike with a decent climb each lap. Dodds says the nature of the course will dictate the way the race unfolds but says everyone will be ready for it.
"It will play a massive part, it is quite steep and quite long as well but is also straight out of transition. It is the Olympics though, you can never write anyone off but as Ryan saw last year (at the test event) the athletes kind of made their move more on the flat - that is where everyone gained most of their time. It does increase both of our chances though, we both love hills as we have shown in Auckland.
"The pure runners are strong though, it wont take too much of the sting out of them, it will take more out of the bigger boys, the swim bikers maybe. But as I said it is the Olympics, if it was a World Series race it might play a bigger part but because this is the Olympics, everyone has been preparing for this for a very long time."
Sissons was the first of the New Zealand men to qualify for the team to Rio and has been focused on the race for some months now and has just moved closer to the course, outside of the Olympic Village.
