Back to World Cup bronze! -SU THREE STYRIA

Tómas Frühwirth reports a successful return to the sport of paratriathlon:

The last time I participated in the European Paratriathlon Championships in Kitzbühel was 2017, with a wild card. At that time I was able to earn money on the back of Jetze Plat (NED).
Now I just feel like doing short distance triathlons again. My plan was to register for the World Championships to leave a signal to the ITU that I wanted to race again in 2025. Basically, there is a points system according to which the paratriathlon starting places are on give them. Since I do not have points that you collect from finishes in ITU races, the probability was
of a very low starting point.
After a few rejections, I luckily got the “green light” 6 days before the start.
Thank you to the Austrian Triathlon Association for their support and short-term processing!

For the last 2.5 weeks I trained as if I already had a starting point in the bag. I’ve been doing triathlons since 2006, which means I can swim and drive a racing wheelchair. This year I trained again and again in both disciplines, but only from time to time and the focus was completely on the hand bike. Since I have been in very high shape for almost 3 months, I was able to activate this “motor” very quickly when swimming and racing wheelchairs.
In fact, 3 months of training would have been better.

Now to the race:
The swim was choppy and I found it a bit difficult. I am very happy with the performance at the current level of training. But I drank a lot from the Mediterranean. In paratriathlon there are 2 classification classes and here I am in the lowest class, which will gain 3 minutes. Jetze Plat (NED), originally from swimming, is in a league of his own and gave me a brutal 2min30sec. Flo Brungraber (AUT), who has improved a lot in swimming in recent years, also 1min28sec. In the end I needed 12min47sec for 750 undulating meters.

The fourth discipline in triathlon is the transitions and I really worried about that. I couldn’t put the swimming splint on, everything went slowly and… – sometimes I lost much more than 1 minute to other athletes in the first transition zone. At sprint speed this is – to put it quickly – not good!!!
I was able to show my strengths on the hand bike (29min 44sec for 20 winding kilometers). Only Jetze Plat (NED) was faster than me.
The second transition zone was okay, but also 10 seconds slower than almost every other athlete.
I’m happy with racing wheelchairs, I don’t have much more to offer at the moment and it was at least the third fastest “run time”. Jetze and Flo (fastest time) were in a league of their own. Flo Brungraber passed me after ¾ of the run and then left me standing.

Bronze at the official ITU Paratriathlon World Championships is indeed impressive.
2min37sec – (+3min higher damage class) behind Jetze Plat (NED).
24sec – (+3min higher damage class) behind Flo Brungraber (AUT).
The damage classes make sense because I can’t change that quickly. Not sure if it should be 3 minutes. This is for the first time in my para sports career a special advantage.

The points are important for me also to get start permits next year.
Jetze Plat (NED) and Flo Brungraber (AUT) gave me a real “eye on the eye”.
But I have a lot of room for improvement in three disciplines: swimming, wheelchair racing and mobility.
I just love the sport of triathlon and would like to start doing it regularly again in the next few years, along with paracycling.