By Rob Cole
Wales has got a new world champion to shout about.
Take a bow Matthew Willis, from Wrexham, for bringing home the ITU World Junior Duathlon crown this month.
The 18-year-old used his impressive speed over the final 2.5km run to take the title in Fyn, Denmark, to complete an incredible week. The previous weekend he won his first ETU Triathlon Junior European Cup Gold medal in Holland.
Willis is desperate to go to the Olympic Games, but he might need to decide in which event he is going to make the grade. A star on the track and over the country for club and country, he has also turned himself into a potential world class triathlete.
Last year he won an individual silver and team mixed relay gold at the European Youth Triathlon Championships in Lithuania. Earlier this year he tasted success at the English Schools Cross Country championships in Leeds, adding the senior title to those he won in the younger age groups in 2014 and 2016.
He was also the fastest European at the World Schools Cross Country Championships in Paris, finishing fifth, and last year he was named as the Welsh Junior Off Track Athlete of the Year by Welsh Athletics.
His win in Denmark was the fourth year in a row that the British team had supplied the individual winner and many experts of pointed to the fact that Alistair Brownlee won the English Schools senior cross country title before going on to become a double Olympic champion in triathlon.
Great weekend at Holten ETU European Cup coming away with my first win as a junior having just finished my A levels fastest run out of the juniors and seniors was icing on the cake pic.twitter.com/maVdBZAOJ5
— Matt Willis (@mwillisrun) July 2, 2018
“I love running and swimming as individual events, but my main focus is on triathlon. I’m hoping to go to Loughborough University after leaving school this summer,” said Willis.
“Loughborough has a great reputation for their sports programmes and coaching and have a history of developing the athletes. The Olympics has to be the target, it’s something that every serious athlete wants to be a part of in their career.
“I think it’s realistic to get there, providing I can keep up the standards I’ve already shown and keep improving. I’m sure I can get there as part of the British team.
“Seeing the likes of the Brownlee brothers doing so well in triathlon has raised the profile of the sport massively and had a positive effect on the funding levels as well.
“There’s still a really long way to go, but I’ll keep pushing myself in every competition I enter to try to get myself there.”
While Willis dreams of glory in the years ahead, former women’s world champion Non Stanford will be hoping for more success this weekend when she joins Vicky Holland, Jessica Learmonth, Jodie Stimpson and Georgia Taylor-Brown in the British team at the fifth round of the ITU World Triathlon Series in Hamburg.
Saturday’s sprint races around the centre of the historic German city features all of the leading contenders for the ITU world titles, while the world Mixed Relay title is up for grabs on Sunday.
Stanford helped the British team finish second in Nottingham in the last relay outing and the Team Wales captain will be hoping to be involved again on Sunday.