CLERMONT, Fla. – The University of Denver women's triathlon team travels to the Orlando area this weekend for the 2024 USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championships on Friday and Saturday.
The 2024 NCAA nationals return to Lake Louisa State Park, which hosted the first college championship in 2014. This year's meet will have a different format and will be held across two days with the 750-meter open-water swim beginning the race on Friday before the event concludes on Saturday with the typical 20-kilometer bike and 5K run.
Damage caused from Hurricane Milton last month has made the original lake and nearby transition area to the bike unsafe for the athletes, forcing the event organizers to adjust the typical sprint triathlon and hold the swim at a different venue. The swim portion will now take place on Friday morning at the Clermont Watersports Complex, which is just down the road from the state park.
The Pioneers secured an automatic team berth into the national championships following their third-place finish at Western Regionals on Oct. 12 at Fellows Lake in Springfield, Missouri. There are three heats at nationals that will comprise NCAA Division I, II and III athletes, with Denver joining five of the other fastest teams and individual qualified athletes in Heat A.
DU will kick off the swim at 8:45 a.m. MT on Friday (10:45 a.m. local time) and will conclude the race on Saturday with a 11:30 a.m. MT start time (1:30 p.m. local time). On Saturday, there will be a staggered start, with the athletes being released into transition and the bike portion based on their times from the swim.
The swim is a one-lap, triangular course around two buoys off the primary Sawgrass Lake beach in the Watersports Complex. The bike is a four-lap loop on the state park's main road that features several hills and a 180-degree turnaround. The run is a two-lap out-and-back that follows the same course as the bike.
Denver is familiar with the venue, as the squad has raced it as part of the two-day Clermont Challenge in their spring schedule every year, and the program's first-ever race came at Clermont on March 6, 2021. The program has had success on the course in the past, as 15 of its top-20 all-time fastest individual 20K bike times have come in Clermont races.
The Pioneers enter as the No. 4-ranked team in the country and have finished in the top four as a team in each of their previous three national championship races. Denver placed fourth at last year's event at Tempe Town Lake in Tempe, Arizona, and it reached the podium for the first time in 2022 by coming in third—the highest finish by an individual women's program in school history.
DU made more history a year ago, as
Maira Carreau won the individual national title as a freshman. It was the first individual championship for the triathlon program, and she became the 128th individual national champion in Denver Athletics history.
Carreau aims to defend her title this year and will be joined on the Pioneers' championship roster by senior captains
Olivia Ebenstein and
Clara Normand, junior
Elizabeth Harita, fellow sophomore
Alex Campbell and freshmen
Beatrice Normand and
Ava Pfaff.
Nationals wraps up DU's four-race regular season, which began over Labor Day Weekend in Hot Springs, South Dakota. The Pioneers placed second at the Southern Hills Triathlon super sprint on Aug. 31 and came in fifth at the Battle in the Fort Collegiate Cup on Sept. 29 in Fort Worth, Texas, before its third-place result at regionals.
More than 200 NCAA triathletes are expected to compete this weekend, with Denver's Heat A featuring 75 athletes. Among the competitors the Pioneers will face in their heat are defending national champion Arizona State, University of Arizona, Texas Christian University, East Tennessee State and Queens University of Charlotte as well as top-rated individual qualifiers from D-I, D-II and D-III squads.
