A familiar face will be helping guide the next generation of Australian triathlon stars at this weekend's Devonport Triathlon.
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In his role as triathlon head coach at Bond University, Craig Walton, the Ulverstone product who represented Australia at the 2000 Olympics and won ITU bronze that same year, has brought a group of six of the sport's future stars to compete in an event he knows so well, having won it himself three times.
He believed the local knowledge he possesses would help his group on Saturday.
"But also in races like these, and this is a pretty high end race being an Australian and Oceania champs, it is going to be a fast race,'' he said.
"It is a dead flat course with a hill in it, which we have been training for as I understand the course as I raced on it many years ago, but even getting used to the water and how cold it is, that will be different for these guys as they have come from Queensland where it is 23 degrees and it will be lucky to be 17 or 18 degrees here.
"There's not much that I can tell these guys to help them because they are pretty good at what they do, but just having that local knowledge of knowing this race and knowing how it helps and the support that the town will give."
Walton's team will consist of Maighan Brown (elite women), Charlie Quinn (elite men), David Pinto (under 23 men) Lachlan Jones, Oliver Cronin and Joe Begbie (junior men), a group he described as "the future of our sport and future Olympians".
"I took this group over six months ago and they weren't really a high performance group and I'd say they are just entering that high performance realm now,'' he said.
"Lachie Jones is leading the Australian junior series and Maighan Brown has started in the professional ranks and could have a big future for Australia in triathlon, but I'd say we have a very developing high performance squad here, which I would back for the future to be some of the best athletes that Australia has.
"They are developing athletes who haven't really trained that hard until I came on board, and after that the whips were cracking and they started training like high performance athlete.
"Whether we see those results on the weekend I don't know, but it is very early days, but this is a long term plan for these guys."
Walton said the Devonport Triathlon was an event which would always hold a "special place" in his heart, and being back at it in this capacity was something he would cherish.
"Being able to bring down athletes from the coaching perspective and trying to establish the same thing here is special,'' he said
"But the great thing about this race over any other race in Australia is that it is a community event still and that is hard to find in events, as they are getting bigger and bigger, and it is hard to find one of those locally supported races anymore. This has always been home to me and still feels like home, so it nice to be able to come back."