Introducing … Michael Poole

You probably won’t have heard much about Michael Poole in the New Zealand sporting media.  Yet.  That’s a shame because this is a good story.

Michael Poole (20) is an international triathlete who was raised in born in Tauranga but did most of his growing up in Auckland.

He was the dominant secondary school triathlete during his school years and had early success out of school with winning his first two Contact Series elite races in 2009/2010 and then the Tauranga Half Ironman in 2010 as an 18 year old. He was also prominent as a junior cyclist winning several Auckland and national titles as being selected for the NZ U19 cycling team. He is currently the Oceania duathlon champion and for a period of time last year was ranked number 2 in the world for that event.

Since then he has continued to develop, train and race with good success. In 2011 he raced triathlon throughout the USA in Tampa, New Orleans, Memphis, San Francisco, Boulder CO, Seattle and Washington DC. He also travelled to Beijing for the U23 World Triathlon Championships – where he was in a breakaway and lead of the bike before being subdued by the Beijing heat. He raced back in NZ for the first part of the summer but was somewhat disrupted through a broken jaw, car vs bike (Shane Warne was not involved), and subsequent surgery.

Michael has just left to begin study towards a Chemical Engineering degree at University of South Florida in Tampa. While studying he will continue his career as a triathlete – racing US based races as a NZ citizen; no Sasha Jones antics here, and international format races as a part of the USA triathlon framework as Triathlon NZ made it clear they would not support him if he studied in the US.

He will again travel throughout the United States and has also races planned in Barbados and Costa Rica. He has been coached by the high profile Jack Ralston for the past five years. In partnership they have developed Michael’s ability to train and, as the video shows, he works very hard at his sport. The training video makes it clear just how much these athletes put in to what they do – especially as the sport of triathlon has taken huge leaps forward in the last few years with the speed required in the swim and run sections.

An athlete like Michael primarily receives their income through sponsorship. USA Triathlon has approximately 140,000 annual members and more the 300,000 take one day membership during the year to do events. The average household income for participants in US$120,000 and some events will have more than 5,000 participants

So don’t say we didn’t give you early warning of a great sponsorship opportunity.