Montauk Triathlon’s 30th

   Merle McDonald-Aaron said Monday that the former 10-time winner of the Montauk triathlon, Eben Jones, who’s the top-ranked 50-to-54-year-old triathlete in the United States, would help celebrate Montauk’s 30th anniversary on Saturday.

    She had tried hard to get another of Jones’s contemporaries, Chuck Sperazza, a multi-winner at Montauk himself, to come back too, “but he’s living in California now and I haven’t been able to reach him, which is disappointing,” McDonald-Aaron said.

    Laurel Wassner, who last year became the first woman ever to win Montauk outright, had not registered as of earlier this week, “but the top three men from last year, David Powers, Ryan Siebert, and Andrew Kalley, have.”

    McDonald-Aaron said she thought the last time Jones won here was in 2002.

    Last year, Wassner, a professional, won in a corrected time of 1 hour, 53 minutes, and 25.3 seconds. Her splits were 22:46 in the mile swim, 51:25 on the 22-mile bike, and 36:59 in the 10K run. “I’ve never broken 40 minutes on that course — I didn’t know I had it in me,” she said afterward.

    The three-part race is to begin on a beach owned by Peter Kalikow near the Star Island Causeway-West Lake Drive intersection at 7:30 a.m. Among its beneficiaries are the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, the Montauk Senior Nutrition Center, the Montauk ambulance squad, St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church, and Phoenix House.

    McDonald-Aaron said “650-something” have registered.