We are Rothsee Triathlon

The youngest children aged 6 - 7 kicked off the competition by jumping into the pleasantly warm Rothsee lake on Saturday noon - a day blessed with bright sunshine. Then, one after another, the other age groups up to the juniors followed in quick succession. After the race, all children were invited to pick up a smoothie at the Memmert pavilion and to participate in the raffle to win a triathlon watch. For teens, interesting information on the training opportunities at the Memmert company was offered as well.

In the afternoon, things picked up speed considerably as the athletes from the second national league raced the sprint distance of 750 m swimming, 20 km biking and 5 km running in teams of four to score valuable points. In the meantime, the spectators got comfortable on the Memmert beach chairs to watch the exciting competition.

Short distance triathlon on Sunday | 1.5 km Swim - 42 km Bike - 10 km Run

On Sunday morning, the red Memmert pavilion was ablaze with sunlight as the day before. After measuring more than 24 °C in the lake, many surprised athletes competing in the Olympic distance had to change from their neoprene suits into their swimming trunks. As a consequence, everyone took a little bit longer swimming the distance of 1500 m, much to the advantage of particularly good swimmers. Reaching a top position, Matthias Grosser was the first Team Memmert member to emerge from the waters; two minutes later, he was followed by triathlon novice Mark Fischer and Benedikt Spangenberg in the first large group.

On the 42 km cycling course, especially Günter Lauterbach and the Memmertian Gregor Stützinger were able to grab many positions. His colleague Hannes Rupprecht, as a small return favour for the previous year, was clearly left standing by Gregor in all three disciplines.

After a very good swimming performance and being the fastest cyclist of his team, Matthias Grosser also was the fastest to complete the 10 km run (in 35:51 minutes) and came in with a very good overall ranking of twelve. Benedikt Spangenberg made a major improvement in his overall ranking compared to last year and, for the first time ever, was among the top 50.

The last-minute drop-out of Sebastian Bleisteiner and Stephan Weber was a particularly hard blow for the Memmert team, as both were unable to attend because of health reasons. Otherwise, the company would have had a good shot of winning the title in the Middle Franconian championship.

Relay team spirit

The good thing about the relay competition is that even novices with little training experience can get a whiff of triathlon air. At the end of the day, Harald von Blumenthal, Jörg Leber and Lucas Haub were the last of all relay teams to cross the finish line. Nonetheless, they were just as happy as the fastest teams of the day about having completed the challenge. Lucas Haub was cheered on by the audience with such zeal down to the very last meter, that it has "whetted his appetite" for athletic challenges. It is precisely these moments that make the Memmert Triathlon at the Rothsee lake special: even though it clearly is an event by nature, it offers a family atmosphere only Roth can offer. Christiane Riefler-Karpa and Peter Krieger sent two more company teams into the race. After them, Lisa Schwab and Ingo Weisler did some serious pedalling and Norbert Schuster and Karlheinz Rauschmeier took on the running track.

In the end, we almost had a champion from our own ranks as the fastest Memmert relay team surprisingly came in second after the swimmer and the runner had to be replaced on short notice the day before. The greater was the overall joy over the successful performance of Marco Eckstein, cycling talent Matthias Röser and Kai Reissinger - who had actually already retired as a runner.

The full list of Team Memmert: