Ventura Was First to the Lighthouse
Peter Ventura, who was the runner-up at the Robert J. Aaron memorial triathlon in Montauk in June, won the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon Sunday, prompting the announcer, Terry Bisogno, to hail his “resurgence.”
Asked after he’d crossed the line (in 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 25.5 seconds) what Bisogno had meant, Ventura, a 39-year-old Huntington resident, said that he hadn’t been among the top triathletic contenders in the past decade owing to fatherhood. Now, he said, he has more time to train.
The run, though mostly flat, had been tough, he said, in answer to a question. “You have to push yourself.” He nodded when this writer recalled Dr. George Sheehan saying that “if you hurt when you’re training you’re doing something wrong — if you hurt in a race you’re doing something right.”
Tom Eickelberg, the swimming coach at the State University at New Paltz, who has owned this race (half-mile swim, 14-mile bike, and 5K trail run) in recent times, was a no-show for the second year in a row — “he should get a girlfriend and get married,” Ventura said with a grin — but Eickelberg’s sister, Betsy, of Leonia, N.J., who won here in 2016, was among the competitors, finishing second among the women, in 1:12:37.8, to Smithtown’s Caitlin Dowd (1:11:57.5).
Eickelberg, who was the runner-up last year as well (to Kira Garry), is the head cross-country coach at SUNY Purchase. Her brother, she said, was busy at the moment recruiting swimmers.
The big news for the 27-year-old Dowd, who’s a nurse in the electrophysiology department at Stony Brook University Hospital, and thus doesn’t have all that much time to train, is that she qualified last month to compete in the world half-Ironman championships in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in September.
She had, she said, been a competitive cyclist, but the numerous crashes persuaded her to switch to triathlons.
Dowd and Eickelberg are friendly rivals. Asked about their head-to-head duel that day, Eickelberg said she’d been first out of the water, at Gin Beach, but that “20 seconds into the bike Caitlin passed me.”
It wasn’t as if Dowd had left Eickelberg in the dust, however; they finished less than a minute apart.
The local winner, and 14th over all, was Mike Bahel, in 1:13:11.6, followed close behind by John Broich of Sag Harbor, in 1:13:19.6. Both are in their mid-50s.
Asked how he felt, Bahel said, “It gets harder and harder . . . the conditions were perfect in the swim, and the bike was perfect too, with some wind, and the run, as always, was hot and muggy.”
“It’s torture,” interjected Peter Canoll.
Thomas Brierley, 26th in 1:17:11.4, edged his father, Craig, 33rd in 1:18:30.2, by a little over a minute.
“He’s getting closer and closer,” said the younger Brierley, who is lifeguarding at Nick’s Beach in Montauk this summer and assists his father in coaching East Hampton High’s girls and boys swimming teams.
“It was a gorgeous day for it,” Thomas said, “overcast with the temperature around 70. . . . Now, I’m going to lie down and rest up before work.”
Evan Drutman of Sag Harbor was 37th, in 1:19:06.6, Tim Treadwell of Amagansett was 39th, in 1:19:30.9, Robert Reich of Montauk was 41st, in 1:19:53.2, Katrina Garry of Montauk was 42nd, in 1:20:08.3, Angelika Cruz, who helps in the coaching of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter youth swim team, the Hurricanes, was 46th, in 1:20:20.6, and Kevin Barry, who coaches East Hampton High’s boys cross-country team, was 74th, in 1:23:25.1.