Whipple disposed of the women's field at the USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championship race with precision

By Brain Metzler
Staff Writer

Sparks, NV (April 22) —Some college kids have no idea what they want to be when they grow up. Others know they want to be a doctor or an accountant or a pharmacist well before they enroll.

Navy junior Justine Whipple? She's an oceanography major who wants to service explosive ordinance disposals, which, among other things, can entail taking old or unused weapons out to sea and, well disposing of them.

On Saturday, Whipple disposed of the women's field at the USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championship race with precision. The race wasn't actually a triathlon at all, because the swimming portion was removed by race officials due to cold water temperatures in Sparks Marina and cold morning air temperatures.

The 1.5K swim segment was replaced with a 3K run. The rest of the course included the original 40K bike and 10K run. On Saturday morning, that was just fine with Whipple. She had placed fifth and second at the last two collegiate triathlon championships, but she has no problem with winning this impromptu collegiate duathlon championship.

She finished the race in 1 hour, 55 minutes, 17 seconds, almost three minutes ahead of runner-up Michelle Lindsay of Virginia Tech.

"I was 15 seconds behind Michelle Lindsay and after I passed her on the first hill on the bike, I never saw anyone again," Whipple said.

That's not entirely true. She saw the CSTV cameraman riding on the back of a motorcycle. He was so impressed he came up to congratulate her when the race was over, as did everyone else.

Whipple also runs cross country and track for Navy and set a school record in the 5,000-meter run during the just completed indoor track season. But it was her bike skills that paid off on Saturday.

"I thought it was a great bike course," Whipple said. "It played to my strength with long uphills that I could power up pretty well."

While Whipple and Lindsay were the cream of the crop among individuals, Montana had the best overall team. Led by a 7-8-10-11 finish from Jennifer Morton, Megan Gaskill, Heather Johanson and Emily Herdon, the Montana Stampede Triathlon Club easily won the women's team title with 26 points. (Runner-up Colorado was a distant second with 42 points).

Montana also won the prestigious overall co-ed title, edging out UC-Berkeley.

"It was a day of surprises," Morton said. "It was a great day for us. We have a great triathlon community in Missoula and we've been training really hard, so we're psyched."

Catch the action from all of the events on several College Sports TV and CBS platforms beginning April 30 as part of the CSTV Collegiate Nationals, a collection of college championship events showcasing more than 2,000 athletes from more than 40 colleges. Seven sports are included in the inaugural Collegiate Nationals —boxing, snowboarding, beach volleyball, triathlon, paintball, wakeboarding and whitewater kayaking.

CSTV Networks Inc. is the leading digital sports media company, connecting more fans to more college sports than any other company. Its many platforms for programming distribution include CSTV: College Sports TV, televising regular season and championship events for 35 men's and women's college sports; CSTV.com and its network of nearly 250 official athletic sites; CSTV All Access, broadband subscription packages providing live audio and video of more than 7,000 events annually; as well as satellite television and radio, in-flight entertainment, wireless networks and more. In November, CBS announced plans to acquire the company in January 2006. For more information, go to www.CSTV.com.

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