Emily Wagner fights her way to a top 10 finish at the 2015 Triathlon Junior World Championship
Not even the stormy skies above the Windy City could spoil Emily Wagner’s Triathlon Junior World Championship debut. The 17 year old from Calgary produced a solid performance that saw her break the one hour barrier for the first time to finish 8th in a race that was rescheduled twice on September 18, so the marquee elite women’s race could be brought forward to avoid the incoming thunderstorms. It was the best result of the day for a Canadian female and the first top 10 finish in the Junior event since 2012.
A relative newcomer to the sport of Triathlon, Wagner entered her first event in the summer of 2013, quickly establishing herself as one of the top junior racers in the country. In the short time she has been competing she has only finished outside the top eight once in a triathlon following a crash during the bike segment. She earned a place on the World Championship team in May with a podium performance in the qualification event, the CAMTRI Pan American Triathlon Championship held in Monterrey, Mexico.
Her final warm up race in Edmonton at the beginning of September took place in temperatures barely above zero and after struggling to remove her bike helmet in transition she lost time to her opponents and finished fourth. The result didn’t rattle her confidence.
“This was my first World Championships so I had no expectations going into this race,” said Wagner. “I was starting in the middle of the field and I’d been warned that it would be a rough swim. There was a lot of hitting and pushing in the water. I decided beforehand not to over think my race. I just needed to follow my instincts and go for it.”
A strong swimmer, she exited the water with the lead pack and settled into a pack on the bike that worked together over a highly technical bike course to try to limit the advantage of the German and American triathletes Laura Lindemann and Taylor Knibb who broke away early and ultimately claimed the top two positions on the podium. Wagner has worked hard with her coaches to develop her bike handling and positioning skills over the last year and was out of harms way when a mistake by a Japanese competitor brought down her Canadian teammate Emy Legault on one of the corners. She matched her best time for the 5 km run to make the top eight.
For the last two years Wagner has received sport science and sport medicine support through the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary’s Talent Lab. The Talent Lab was established to provide support in the critical early stages of their development to athletes identified as having the potential to be future World and Olympic medallists.
Wagner’s coach Cal Zaryski is pleased with the progress she is making. “Emily is still relatively new to the sport but she raced like a veteran with the heart of a lion,” said Zaryski. “She’s a long way from her full potential but she is such a good racer she gets everything possible out of the tool kit she has at the moment. We’re working on a long term plan to keep her healthy and build her structural tolerance so that she’s at her absolute best a few years down the road.”
For more information on the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary Talent Lab, please contact:
Paula Jardine, Lead, Athlete Development
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