HAMIL­TON, Bermu­da – Bermu­da’s gold­en girl Dame Flo­ra Duffy has an­nounced she will fo­cus on longer dis­tances in a bid to boost her chances of suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing her Olympic triathlon ti­tle in Paris next year – which she de­scribes as her “big goal”.

In ad­di­tion to her Olympic ti­tle, Duffy has twice won Com­mon­wealth Games gold, six Xter­ra World Cham­pi­onships and a record four World Triathlon Se­ries Cham­pi­onships (WTSC), but was a no­table ab­sen­tee when the new WTCS sea­son opened in Abu Dhabi last week­end.

In­stead, the 35-year-old has sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to step up in dis­tance and com­pete on the Pro­fes­sion­al Triath­letes Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PTO) 100-kilo­me­tre Tour this sea­son, which be­gins in Ibiza, Spain, on May 6, the Roy­al Gazette news­pa­per said.

“My whole life goal was to win at the Olympics, and I did that,” Duffy, the on­ly Bermu­di­an ever to win Olympic gold, said in a new PTO video fea­ture on ful­fill­ing her child­hood dream in Tokyo in 2021. “Any­thing that I do in my ca­reer from now is ic­ing on the cake.

“My goal for this year was to do some dif­fer­ent types and styles of rac­ing. I’ve on­ly ac­tu­al­ly ever done one sort of longer-course race, and that was in the be­gin­ning of 2020, which feels like a life­time ago be­cause that’s pre-pan­dem­ic.

“Paris [2024 Olympic Games] is my big goal, but I would al­so love to jump in­to 100k dis­tance.

“The dis­tance is not what I’m com­fort­able with, but it’s new for me to be some­where where I’m un­com­fort­able or un­sure of how the race will play out for me.”

De­spite her rel­a­tive lack of ex­pe­ri­ence over the longer for­mat, which con­sists of a two-kilo­me­tre swim, an 80-kilo­me­tre bike ride and 18-kilo­me­tre run, Duffy heads in­to the cam­paign 12th in the PTO rank­ings af­ter en­cour­ag­ing dis­plays at the 70.3 World Cham­pi­onships, US Open and Collins Cup dis­plays last sea­son. She al­so won Iron­man 70.3 South Africa in Jan­u­ary 2020.

Duffy is aware that she will be in the un­fa­mil­iar po­si­tion of un­der­dog on the tour, which boasts a star-stud­ded line-up head­ed by Switzer­land’s Daniela Ryf, a five-time win­ner of the Iron­man World Cham­pi­onships and Iron­man 70.3 World Cham­pi­onships.

“I come in as the reign­ing Olympic, World and Com­mon­wealth cham­pi­on and I guess my rep­u­ta­tion pre­cedes me a lit­tle bit,” added Duffy, who was beat­en by Ryf in the open­ing race of the Collins Cup se­ries in Bratisla­va, Slo­va­kia in Au­gust last year.

“For me, I haven’t proven my­self over this dis­tance at all. I’ve done one race and to be per­fect­ly hon­est, it wasn’t the best per­for­mance at all. So I think I have a lot to prove that I can race well at this dis­tance.”

De­spite Duffy’s reser­va­tions, Ryf, al­so 35, says she is sure the Bermu­di­an will cope with the tran­si­tion to the longer dis­tance af­ter ob­serv­ing her in­cred­i­ble suc­cess over the past few years.

“I raced her back when we were ju­niors, and it’s amaz­ing to see how she has de­vel­oped as an ath­lete,“ Ryf said.

“She had amaz­ing races and then was al­so for a while, I think, strug­gling. It’s re­al­ly im­pres­sive how she turned around and re­al­ly brought up this amaz­ing ca­reer.

“The last cou­ple of years, she’s just been ab­solute­ly bril­liant. She im­proved that per­for­mance when it re­al­ly counts. When the pres­sure is on, some peo­ple crack, Flo­ra won’t crack, she’s very tough.”

CMC