The Dubbo Triathlon Club won't get a chance to host it's tri-stars event this weekend, with restrictions on events and gatherings making the fixture unfeasible.
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Club Secretary Ben Orford admitted it was dismaying to miss out on the event, especially after the last inter-club round in Cowra was also canned.
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"We're disappointed, but we understand why it's happened, we weren't all that worried about Cowra in total, we were only going to send three or four people, but our last event here and the tri-stars not going ahead, that hurts," Orford said.
The abrupt ending to the season ensures the Dubbo side stay in fourth place, ahead of the Cowra Cobras, with the Orange Piranhas having earlier clinched the title for this year after securing strong victories in the opening three rounds.
Along with the races, the club had planned to use this weekend's tri-stars event as a presentation day and club celebration for the juniors at the end of the season, both ideas will now have to be rescheduled.
"We were going to present the kids with awards for things like participation and attendance, all those will have to be done at another time," Orford said.
"We were also going to have our club celebration for the end of the season, we're going to have to give that a miss too."
While those losses are a blow to the club, there's a number of silver linings visible for both Orford, and the Dubbo triathlon team.
One is that Orford is set to take out the Dubbo's most valued player honours after turning in consistent performances week after week.
"That was a bit lucky for me, a combination of doing well in my age group and attending all the events," Orford said.
The other upside is that even though the club is unlikely to see anymore competitions until next season starts in August, they've already been boosted by a huge influx of talented juniors.
"The big change in the tri-stars this year was in the numbers we were getting," Orford said.
"In previous years, we've got a lot of really young kids in the lowest age group, but now we're getting just as many in the seven to 10, 10 to 14 age groups, we've had a really big up-tick in those older ages."
"We're not far away from having a whole flood of juniors coming through, which hasn't been the case for many years."
Orford says the 'next generation' has a number of talented up and comers like Bryce Foley, who's already proving himself against the older age groups at just 14.
"He's only that age and he's competing with 19-year-olds who are the top three in that age group, once those three move up next year, he's going to be very hard to beat."
