Hartley dominates at SA Sprint Champs
'2015 is going to be a defining year for me' says Hartley.
2014 SPRINT World Champs bronze medallist, Bridgitte Hartley, lived up to the hype as she made light work of the rest of the ladies’ field at the 2015 SA Sprint Championships at the Roodeplaat Dam in Johannesburg in some tricky conditions over the long Easter weekend, while her boyfriend and four-time Dusi champ, Andy Birkett, stole much of the limelight in the senior men’s race.
Although Hartley was dominant in all of her races, the Olympic bronze medallist was not entirely satisfied with her weekend and she felt that she was always battling against something and did not seem entirely comfortable throughout the championships.
“I am a little bit disappointed, to be honest,” Hartley said after the event. “There were a number of factors that kept me from being able to focus properly, from the conditions to a number of delayed starts. I wasn’t able to train my body into a routine before races, which set me back a bit.”
For Hartley, making sure that she was on top of her game throughout was difficult and the sprint star battled to reach her full potential in her races. However, getting in some much needed racing time was important even though the conditions were not ideal for sprinting.
“The wind is something that you cannot control, and it was a strange wind, which made racing quite challenging and I really didn’t seem to feel better throughout; I actually felt worse and worse, but it was important that I got out there and got some racing under my belt.
“Something that I have taken out of the racing is that I still have a lot of hard work to do before I head off to Europe. This weekend made me realise that – which is probably a good thing,” she added.
Although the championships did not quite go as well as Hartley was hoping for, she is still in good shape heading into the international season. With such an important season coming up, she feels a significant amount of pressure on her shoulders with the Rio De Janeiro Olympics looming in the distance.
“This is going to be a defining year for me because of the pressure of Olympic qualification, and the challenges of this season are going to be different due to the fact that I have to end in the top eight in the world if I want to compete at the Olympics. There is a lot of hard work to be done, but I know that, and I am really looking forward to what the season has in store for me,” she mentioned.
