Hi Dev,

I had friends back in Switzerland that made the trip for this race. Don't know about the bike course, but apparently water was 14 degrees C. So yeah, not very warm :-)

I have swam in the water on the Cote d'Azur in mid May without a wetsuit, and survived (barely, but I was 19 or 20 years old, drunk and partying in St.Tropez and lost a bet involving swimming into the Med in the depth of night....but that was not triathlon...or maybe it was some weird triathlon event that involved drinking games...not sure). In any case, I am partial to any racing on the Cote d'Azur as I really can't get enough of that area, even if it involves April swimming...can't be much worse than Oceanside in March!

Dev

Maybe some of the Euro crew have some feedback from Cannes!

Water was definitely wetsuit-mandatory. Not Alcatraz cold, but cold enough. I would have gone out if it wasn't for the a.) cold water or b.) plentiful fist-sized jellyfish that were across the calm waters. Most everyone I talked to got a little zap on the face from the lil' suckers. Otherwise, the weather was perfect for the bike and run; a little cool-overcast, mid-60s F, but it was sunny the days leading up, upwards of 80F. Add nice weather to a tough bike and a gorgeous locale, and it's a race that I hope pics up steam.

Detailed race report and gallery elsewhere on the Internetz....

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Jay Prasuhn
Marketing Specialist, American Bicycle Group (Quintana Roo//Litespeed//Obed)
twitter.com/jayprasuhn

Jay....same date next year or are they considering moving it to May?

I didn't hear the RD talk about moving the race at all, but can/will certainly ask and let you know. What's your reasoning? I think it was an anticipated race for several of the Euros that generally don't travel too far (like Faure, Dogana, Belaubre & Morel etc.).... it's why I referred to it as their Oceanside-esque opener; they were most all getting their seasons kicked off.

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Jay Prasuhn
Marketing Specialist, American Bicycle Group (Quintana Roo//Litespeed//Obed)
twitter.com/jayprasuhn

Hi Jay, my reasoning was whether the cold temps deter athletes, but as you said, just like Oceanside is early in California (or Galveston in Texas), it makes sense for the Europeans and saves traveling. Just a lot more fun being in Cannes in May than in April (well, if it involves using the water). I supposed mid May is also a gong show around Cannes with the film festival and also the F1 in Monaco not far away. So I can see wanting to bring in tri tourists in April.

The race sadly did not care about us. We did not know about it ahead of time and getting details was difficult. We however gave it love anyway.

Had we been helped more it would have been the feature race, versus 70.3 Puerto Rico.

But here is what Tim wrote:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/...pr_13_2014_4273.html

H

Thanks Herbert. Timothy's article was good in terms of covering the racing, but I was looking more to understand the age grouper experience. Details about the course and challenges, traveler logistics, user experience, is it possible to pre ride the course, hotels etc etc.

By the way, this coming weekend, looks like a nice line up at Challenge Taiwan. That would be another race where I'd want some visibility into the age grouper "user experience" if you know what I mean. That's not something that would be covered in an article about the pro event (that's why I asked if there were any race reports from our european friends etc etc).

Dev

I raced on Sunday and indeed, the two laps-swim course was full of "lil' suckers" indeed. Still have two scares on my face to remember it but nothing too bad. The water was around 14°C which was pretty cold but lake-like flat, not a single wave and sunny, so actually quite hard to see the buoys.

The bike race was a "nightmare", with a lot of roundabouts, slow turns, never flat and some really tough hills (many of them with 10 to 16% gradient for 200 to 400m)... on top of that the last downhill was quite dangerous due to traffic and damaged road. You can check it on my strava activity (flat tubular in the last downhill -_-): http://app.strava.com/activities/130147723. To give you an idea, Fré Van Lierde rode an average of 35,3km/h "only" while he knows the course well.

The run was a flat one with 4 in&outs on the Croisette with perfect weather conditions (cloudy and not too hot).

Transitions were quite long !

There was a nice Pro field at the start (Van Lierde, Del Corral, Faure, Belaubre,...) but the lead group apparently went off the bike-course and cut it, so they had to stop (referee's order) on the run for 3minutes in order to get things back to normal (which doesn't seem to be the case in the end and created quite a lot of drama among the athletes...). Difficult to understand as for me and other friends, the bike course was perfectly indicated.

All in all, it was a very nice race, well organized with the best finisher area ever in terms of food (gargantuesque as we say in french) ! But the bikecourse was a killer one and they lacked one aid-station on the run (only one for the 4km loop =/).

That's it !

And to give you more info on the race-experience from a age-grouper point of view coming from Belgium for the week-end (so flew in on Saturday AM and flew out on Sunday evening):

- Nice airport quite close and trains available and quite easy;
- Loads of cheap hotels near the expo (at least 30 of them at max 3km from the start-aera, some even 500m from there);
- Water is cold but easy to swim the day before;
- Bike course open to the traffic which was a low-point as it was sometimes dangerous but it's possible to ride the course before (take a gps with you as it was really complicated, loootttssss of turns and roundabouts =D);

But as I said, in general it was very well-organized and it's definitely a nice season-opener. Although I know that in the past (it was called Tristar 111 back then), they had to cancel the swim because of bad weather and "big" waves which is totally unusual on the french-riviera.


Cheers,
Nico

Nico, thanks for this input. Glad your race went OK minus the final flat. Did you ride it on a tri bike or road bike given all the turns, roundabouts and descents? Yes, Nice airport is very close to Cannes. For me, it would be a one stop air flight (stop in Frankfurt, connect to Nice).