DU Triathlon Squad to Defend Title at Oktoberfest and Host Inaugural Mile High Relays

The Denver Pioneers women’s triathlon team will defend their title in the NCAA division at the Oktoberfest Sprint Triathlon at Union Reservoir in Longmont on Saturday, Sept. 24. The DU squad will then host the inaugural Mile High Relays the next day on Sunday, Sept. 25 on the Denver University campus.

Mile High Relays

This is the first time in school history that an NCAA triathlon event will be held at DU, and this year’s race will feature the programs that finished in each of the top-four spots at last year’s national championships. Among the NCAA division-I teams that will join Denver at the relays are defending national champion Arizona State as well as San Francisco and South Dakota.

The race will begin at approximately 8 a.m. MT at the El Pomar Natatorium at DU’s Ritchie Center, and the general public is welcome to come and watch for free in the pool’s seating area (enter through main concourse) and/or outside in the stands of the adjacent soccer stadium. The relays will feature each participant taking part in a 200-meter swim in the pool before roughly an 800-meter run course outside on campus before tagging the next member of the squad to compete in the circuit.

Each team will field two relay teams in the race, A and B, with each group featuring three athletes. The final group placement and how many points each school earned will be determined once the third and final athlete from each set finishes the swim and run course.

The participating teams can earn as much as two scores, with their A and B squads each able to score and the combined total determining first, second, third and fourth place overall. Each school can also field a C Group in the relay, but that unit will be competing as an exhibition and won’t be eligible to score.

Below is the scoring format:

FINISH	POINTS EARNED
1st	16
2nd	14
3rd	12
4th	10
5th	8
6th	6
7th	4
8th	2

Oktoberfest Triathlon

The 2022 Mile High Relays will be the culmination of a busy competing weekend, as the Pioneers and the other three division-I squads will race at the Oktoberfest Sprint at Union Reservoir in Longmont, Colorado, on Saturday, Sept. 24. The NCAA race begins at 8 a.m. MT

Denver is the defending women’s champion at the Oktoberfest Sprint, as the Pioneers had athletes finish in each of the top five spots last year, with now sophomores Freya McKinley (first) and Avarie Faulkner (third) placing on the podium alongside then-graduate student Emily Pincus (second).

The Mile High Relays and Oktoberfest Sprint are additions to the Pioneers’ and the other NCAA teams’ schedules after the two-day Americas Triathlon Cup St. George event in Utah was supposed to take place the same weekend, but those races were cancelled after the initial team schedules were announced.

DU opened the 2022 season on Sept. 3 at the Southern Hills Triathlon in South Dakota and swept the NCAA podium to help it earn its third team win in program history. McKinley won her second career race and first since the 2021 Oktoberfest Sprint, while fellow sophomore Clara Normand placed second and freshman Elizabeth Harita came in third.

— Ron Knabenbauer / Denver Athletics