DENVER – The Denver Pioneers women's triathlon team has a busy weekend of competition in the state of Colorado with races in Longmont and on the University of Denver campus on Saturday and Sunday.
 
DU aims to defend its team title at the Oktoberfest Sprint on Saturday, Sept. 24 at Union Reservoir in Longmont before hosting the inaugural Mile High Relays on Sunday, Sept. 25 at the El Pomar Natatorium and Denver Soccer Stadium. Both races are set to begin at 8 a.m. MT.
 
The Pioneers won the women's event at the 2021 Oktoberfest Sprint after sweeping the podium and placing athletes in each of the top five spots. Now sophomore Freya McKinley picked up her first career victory in the race, while fellow underclassmen Avarie Faulkner came in third. Then graduate student Emily Pincus joined the Denver duo on the stand in second place.
 
Saturday's race will be a typical sprint format, with the athletes taking part in an 800-meter swim (half mile) and a single-loop 20.7-kilometer bike ride (12.9 miles) before finishing with an out-and-back 5K run (3.1 miles). Among the D-I schools set to join DU in the race are defending national champion Arizona State, runner-up University of San Francisco and the University of South Dakota. Division II Black Hills State and Montana State Billings will also race in the NCAA wave.
 
On Sunday, the program will host its first-ever race on campus in the Mile High Relays. Denver, as well as ASU, USF and USD will all participate in the three-person swim-run relay, as the competitors will race in a 200-meter swim in the school's Olympic-size pool and roughly a one-kilometer run (.95) around the adjacent sports fields of the natatorium and Ritchie Center. Each school will have two relay groups that can score, and teams can also have a non-scoring exhibition group compete as well. Click here for more information on the event.
 
Each of the four programs that will take part in the Mile High Relays also finished in the top four at the 2021 national championships.
 
This will be the second and third races of the season for the Pioneers after they opened the 2022 campaign at the Southern Hills Triathlon in Hot Springs, South Dakota, on Sept. 3. Denver won the NCAA team event at the race by sweeping the podium. McKinley picked up her second career win and first since the 2021 Oktoberfest Sprint, while fellow sophomore Clara Normand placed second and freshman Elizabeth Harita came in third. Sophomore Olivia Ebenstein (sixth), freshman Nadiya Linde-Elmhirst (10th), Faulkner (11th) and graduate student Melissa Funes (12th) also earned top-12 placements.
 
The Mile High Relays and Oktoberfest Sprint are additions to the Pioneers' and the other NCAA teams' schedules after the schools were supposed to compete at the two-day Americas Triathlon Cup St. George event in Utah the same weekend. However, those races were cancelled after the initial team schedules were announced.
 
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