TRIATHLON New South Wales have already identified Sophie Martin as a rising star, but on Tuesday morning she showed competitors across the Central West exactly why the state body is excited about her potential.
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At just 15 years of age, Martin took out the Bathurst Wallabies Triathlon Club women's long race.
In doing so the Orange talent become one of the youngest winners of an open-age race in the Central West Inter-club Triathlon Series, with the Bathurst event round two of the 2020-21 series.
"I used to win races a lot in the juniors, but now I've stepped up and I'm versing a lot older people, now it's starting to get a bit harder. But I'm also training a bit more now," Martin said before offering a broad smile.
Martin has been putting in plenty of training over the school holidays and it showed as she led the field of 48 for the entire race.
It was conducted in a grand prix format, which meant competitors started with a 2.5 kilometre run leg, then had a 200m swim before heading off on a 16km cycle leg.
Martin covered the distance in a hot time of 59 minutes, 31 seconds. She did it without taking on any fluids while riding and handled the blustery conditions on Eleven Mile Drive well.
"It was a tiring format I feel like, but it was good to break it up into heaps of short distances. It made it a bit hard later on after the ride as you still had a swim and a run," Martin said.
"It was windy on the bike, Dad put new wheels on it so it was a bit wobbly. I also forgot my drink bottle on the bike, so I was very thirsty. I just went from there and I'm glad to have water now."
Martin led home an all Orange women's long course podium with Molly Dean (1:001.31) second and Jessie Dean (1:01.07) third. Bathurst's Kirsten Howard (1:01.57), who had been second after the cycle, placed fourth with Kerry Maloney (1:02.7) fifth.
Martin's next big goal is to take on people her own age at Penrith at the NSW All Schools Triathlon.
"I have All Schools coming up, it's probably one of the biggest ones where I can just verse my age group. That's at the start of March, that was postponed," she said. "I have a heap of training camps coming up."