FEATURES

Heather's Greatest Performance?

Monday, 10 November 2014 00:10

(Great YndeCam photo - Heather Lendway way off-the-front at Life Time Tri - Minneapolis.)

Minnesota Multisport Awards - This is one of two final posts explaining how the Committee determined award winners. Here are some of the arguments behind their selection of Female Performance of the Year: Heather Lendway's Course Record win at Life Time Tri - Minneapolis.

Though DANI FISCHER's victories at Best of the US (largest BOUS margin of victory to date: 4:07) and Long Distance Nationals (4:23:37 - fastest 70.3 time of the year in the US by an amateur woman), were epic, with a capital "E," it was obvious to the Selectors early on that one of HEATHER LENDWAY's nominated performances would win the POY Award. She is simply a cut-or-two (or three) above the rest of her peers, the most pro-ready amateur in the US. Not only that, she is argubly the fastest amateur female that America has ever produced.

From the standpoint of "speed," the Committee agreed that HL's 1:04 at Lake Minnetonka may have been her finest effort. (A strong argument can also be made for her outright win in 1:25, which was not nominated, at Square Lake.)

On the other hand, her dominating effort at Life Time - Minneapolis was perceived as being both fast and internationally significant, even more than her victories at Milwaukee Nationals (the most competitive US...

amateur race ever) and Edmonton Worlds. Why? Because the podiums at Minneapolis and Worlds were the same--Lendway, Dani Fischer and Robin Pomeroy--and Heather's margin of victory there (Mpls) was 3:47, whereas it was only 12-seconds at Edmonton.

At Nationals, Lendway's margin over runner-up Fischer was 28-seconds. On the top end, i.e. top six women, Minneapolis' field was as talented as those at Nationals and Worlds, and there (Mpls) HL demonstrated unequivocally that she was in a league of her own.