Polson triathlon has successul return after one-year hiatus

This year was the first year Polson hosted a triathlon after the summer of its inception.

Now that the triathlon is back, it’s again building the number of participants that have participated in the triathlon, which could become a bi-annual event.

Matt Seeley, one of the triathlon’s main event organizers over the past few years, said he was pleased with the community involvement during Saturday morning’s race.

“The community is very supportive, and that is one of the reasons that I like doing it so much,” Seeley said. “The reason I like doing this so much is because of how much support we get from the community with volunteers, businesses and sponsors.”

Seeley was impressed with the number of volunteers that helped out with the event. Despite the one-year hiatus, the triathlon still had 100 volunteers that assisted in various capacities with the race.

“I think we had well over 100 volunteers to put on this amazing event,” Seeley said. “We had twice as many volunteers as we did participants, and that is pretty special the way the community supports us when they do this. “

Seeley, who isn’t sure of the status of the triathlon moving forward, whether it remains an annual or bi-annual event, said he felt the overall turnout of the event was solid.

“I think we did OK, and it was good to give people a little bit of break last year with the volunteers,,” Seeley said. “We took a little break last year, and (this year) we came back and pulled off a successful event. We are excited about the number of volunteers and great community support we get. This year, we didn’t have quite 50 racers, and in 2017 we had 100. That was the only frustration is that we didn’t draw more racers.”

During the 2017 triathlon, the women’s side featured top-tier competition from international competitors.

“The women’s side this year, was pretty different, because we had some real stars in the past on the women’s side,” Seeley said. “There were a lot of other things happening, and they didn’t come back to defend their top five. This gave some of our local competitors a chance to be a champion of the race.”

In contrast to previous years, the men’s side boasted of some top-tier competitors in this event.

“Certainly on the men’s side, we had a lot of good competitors in this year’s event,” Seeley said. “We had some of our local folks in top positions. The men’s field was pretty competitive, and there was a pretty high level of competition (in both the men’s and women’s fields).”

Because of the unseasonable weather conditions in the middle of August, the terms of the water the contestants had to contend with was rougher than usual.

“The challenge of the swim is to combat pretty big waves, and it was amazing to see some of the swimmers work so hard to get around those waves,” Seeley said. “This definitely adds to the challenge for all of the people to get through it.”