Sérgio Marques Blog

Helder Milheiras and Hugo Ribeiro, two of my regular wheel suckers ( )just finished Roth, together in 9:54

Pedro Gomes (aka Krepe) finished in a great 8th place in the european Double olimpic champs.

congrats to them.

Special thanks to former Team mate, Stephen Bayliss, for being abble to recover from IM brasil and pull a great race too. I guess it was possible to recover in 4 weeks… a direct hit to the Portuguese Federation. AAH

Lots of races around…

I have a lot of friends racing in Roth, i wanted to be there but since the long course european Champs where in the same day, i couldnt go for it. Still one of “must do” races for me.

My friend Pedro Gomes is racing the LC European champs, i should be there, read the previous post.

And Tom Evans is going for the win in IMCDA, hopefully

Good luck to everyone…

Did i say that i should be in belgium? :P 

 This weekend I was counting to race in the long distance triathlon European championships( ELDC), wont comment long distance being related with a double Olympic, it was way better the nice distance. Anyway, I was counting, it was on my schedule to represent my country.

 I guess I wont, this is a story that starts in the day after brazil , when I was packing what was left of my ego.

A lot of people (maybe more Portuguese friends) know how the Portuguese federation works. Basically they want to control every thing, “outside athletes” aren’t welcome and are pushed to the side or even more. Maybe it’s good to remind a episode that I had where i claimed the unfair treatment of what I called back in the day “out of the circle Athletes”. I posted this on an older version of my website and it started a sort of written war.

“A quick note regarding press releases from the Portuguese tri federation

I must say I am extremely disappointed on how I have been treated by the Portuguese triathlon federation regarding my results on both national and international races. Although I’m on the national triathlon team, I have my own coach (Paulo Sousa) that is outside the federation circle so I am a bit outside of the circle as well. The thing is, the press releases from my races seem (are) to be disrespectful on the merit I had, compared with the rest of the athletes, that are praised when a good result is achieved. Am I unhappy for having the federation athletes being praised for good results? No, I’m unhappy for having my own results (and I’m not the only one) thrown to the garbage pile. Fortunately I have lots of people that support me and I will have a good Portuguese crowd supporting me in Hawaii this year which makes me very proud. “

Written war….hmmmm interesting, the federation is no more than 5km from where i live.

So as i said this new “episode” starts in the day after brazil, I got a call from a guy (ill call guy) from the federation asking how did the race go, like he didn’t knew, and after explaining again and a short chat, he told me that I wasn’t going to the ELDC claiming it was too late to register etc. I really didn’t want to talk to much at that time so was kind of polite and mentioned that I would let him know about my future plans. Going to the ELDC is a right that i have in the Portuguese sport rules, i wont go into that, but it is.

As i got home, i have asked the reason of not going to the ELDC. My triathlon club was kind enough to handle with the federation on this matter. So the reason alleged where, not enough time to register, I wouldn’t be fit if I had done Brazil IM, not enough communication between me and federation. What I understand from this is that once more “out of the circle” athletes are screwed big time.

How can 4 weeks isn’t enough for a registration in a race? There was contact from my part to the race organizer and he told me it was totally fine but it should be done by the federation.

Hmmm 4 weeks isn’t enough to recover and race, ive done a few now and being in shape after an IM is for me and my coach to decide (4 weeks!!!!), besides I haven’t raced, AAH

Not enough communication…. WTF i got a call when i was in brazil and paid a big amount of money with roaming in that call!!!! i have the same cell phone in Portugal , same number, WE TRAIN in THE SAME POOL. How can this be???

So since the federation clearly didn’t wanted to take me to the ELDC I (we) offered to pay for every expense, travel, hotel, registration, the federation only needed to, well, register. After asking this, the whole discussion turned other direction that had nothing to do with the ELDC, and didn’t replied to my call on this. HMMMMMM interesting who is playing dumb here?

One other cool stuff was earlier in the season when my club manager asked a written paper with a formal statement from the president that basically would say that Ironman triathlon is good for the triathlon sport (is that so who would guess). The paper was written with a kind of blackmail, I was advised to stop posting on forums, etc, basically to “shut up” with my thoughts and opinions.

It is important to notice that this is not about athletes… but it is interesting how each good athletes is manipulated to change everything, for personal achievement of coaches. Press is manipulated to make good results look like are achieved through same coaches. lets take Sergio Silva for example (3 in world duathlon champs this year) witch like me has a coach out of the circle, Duarte Marques, Anais Moniz among others are all disrespected in my opinion, and, in theirs.

There is of course a lot of other stuff that bothers me, I just felt the need to write a bit.

Other than this, my bike is definitely lost according to IBERIA so that is my main goal now, the hell with Federation BS

Oooh and IM Austria training is going well too

my hotel room

beach right next to the hotel, the swim was on this beach (Jureré beach)

Cathy was strong enough to pull a smile from me

UUUH HMMM

Peter “ironscot” cathy and me

No I didn’t gave up my blog, just retired for a few weeks.

 Don’t want to go back Brasil crap, I have a black hole in my memory. I do have some nice comments on the last post that I would like to thank.

My bike didn’t show up yet, and it never will IMO.

 Austria is next, im training on my planet X road bike that i never used till the day i arrived from brazil, weird feeling to train all year round on a tri bike will the position i have in 2 year and then change to a road bike.

Training with a bit of hanger, not only from what happened (im really trying to not talk about it) but also from another stuff that i will write in the upcoming posts

Dont Fly IBERIA
Dont FLY IBERIA