Posted: July 15, 2007

Triathlon: Fontana wins Italian triathlon national championship

(July 14, 2007) MILAN, ITALY - There's a new campione in town. SLHSports athlete Daniel Fontana (www.danielfontana.net) (Dimensione dello Sport RP-Action Team; blueseventy) Saturday won the hot, hilly and technical Italian Olympic-Distance Triathlon Championship, in the Italian northeast city of Treviso. He's now the Federazione Italiana de Triathlon (FITri) national champion at two distances - just last weekend Fontana destroyed fellow World Cup competitors Volodymyr Polikarpenko and Manuel Huerta, winning Italy's Sprint-Distance Triathlon Championship, also a draft-legal race. "The race was so tough, warm with high humidity, and an elite field of 60 people. It took place in the middle of the mountains at a lake called Tarzo Revine. We had two laps swimming, four hilly, technical laps of cycling, and three hilly run laps. It really was a tough course, with grass, asphalt and dirt," said Fontana, late Saturday night, from his home in Milan. "The race was very tactical, especially between the two big teams, Carabinieri, they won last year, and us, DDS RP-Action. We controlled the race in swimming and bike, which were actually Carabinieri's strength, and I took the run responsibility, making up the small difference in the first lap and taking control, and the advantage, in the second and third laps." After a number of difficult World Cup races and domestic events in recent months, Fontana has not had much time to recuperate. "This really was great head-to-head competition, and after two hard races in two weeks, I have new confidence that I hope to bring with to the Salford World Cup." His next race will be the Salford BG Triathlon World Cup, July 29th, in Salford, Great Britain, which will be broadcast live by the International Triathlon Union (ITU). Following that event, Fontana will race in Ginevra (ITA), then at the Hamburg BG Triathlon World Championships (Germany, Sept. 2nd), followed by the Beijing BG Triathlon World Cup - the Olympics test event (Japan, Sept. 15th). Professional triathlete, Athens Olympic triathlete, and half-ironman champion Daniel Fontana resides in Milan, Italy, and races worldwide on the ITU World Cup circuit, and domestically for Dimensione dello Sport RP-Action Team . Highly educated, he's also a degreed accountant in his native Argentina, and does occasional fashion modeling. Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest