Two Manitoba triathletes bound for Olympics

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This article was published 29/06/2016 (3630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two Manitoba triathletes are set to wear the maple leaf at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Oak Bluff’s Tyler Mislawchuk and Winnipeg product Sarah-Anne Brault are on the five-person team nominated for Rio, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced Wednesday. The two are among the three women and two men who will compete for Canada in the triathlon, a team composed entirely of first-time Olympians.

At just 21, Mislawchuk had a breakout debut on the World Triathlon Series, and has been Canada’s most consistent triathlon competitor in 2016. He turned in two career-best 10th place finishes on the top circuit, along with an 11th place finish.

“The journey for myself has been all-encompassing,” Mislawchuk said in a statement. “Everything I do on a daily basis helps towards making me a better triathlete and accomplish this dream I had as a kid of being an Olympian. It is exhilarating for the five of us to experience such an epic event like the Olympics for the first time together.”

Also joining the team is Brault, 26, who lives in Quebec but grew up in Winnipeg, where she got her start as an athlete swimming with the Manitoba Marlins club. Brault has earned two World Cup medals and five top-15 World Triathlon Series finishes, including a fourth-place finish on a tough course in Auckland, New Zealand.

“I’m looking forward to seizing this opportunity to get even better and having my best result of the year in Rio, on a course I really enjoy,” Brault said in a statement. “We are quite young and inexperienced at the Games level, but everyone’s been racing the best in the world every few weeks and learning and improving so I know we are hungry for more.”

The team will race several more World Triathlon Series events before the Olympics kick off in Rio. Rounding out the team are Quebec’s Amelie Kretz, B.C.’s Kirsten Sweetland and Ontario’s Andrew Yorke.