County Triathlon Keeps Running Just for the Fun of It

The winning times probably won’t be quite as fast and no one will be diving headlong into their shiny new convertible after crossing the finish line, but more than 750 competitors will swim, cycle and run in and around Lake Mission Viejo Sunday morning in the 10th annual Orange County Performing Arts Center Triathlon.

And they’ll do it for the sheer joy of competition.

Title sponsor Mazda and the Guilds of the Center, the support group that has owned and helped stage the race since its inception, decided to drop the event this year. But the triathlon was revived when Monrovia-based Pacific Sports signed a five-year deal to manage the race.

There will be no professional competition--last year’s event included a total purse of $20,000 and sports cars for the men’s and women’s winners--but the enthusiasm of the amateurs figures to be as intense as ever when the race starts at 7 a.m. at the lake’s Playa del Norte beach.

“We had heard rumblings for a couple of months before the announcement [in April] that the event was being dropped,” said Mike Bone, a managing partner of Pacific Sports. “Our first reaction was we just couldn’t let it happen.

“Southern California, specifically between Orange County and San Diego, is really the birthplace of the triathlon and this event has always been recognized as one of the top competitions in the country. With the sport entering its first Olympic quadrennial, we just felt it couldn’t afford to lose one of the premier events.

“Somebody needed to step in and take responsibility and we were the company with the tools to do it.”

The firm, which also runs the National City Triathlon in Cleveland and the Human Race in Newport Beach, had only six weeks to get the Mission Viejo event back on track. Bone says it would have been impossible without what he calls “incredible” support from the Guilds of the Center’s volunteers.

“I’ve had people tell me that they didn’t sleep for a week when they heard the event was canceled,” Bone said. “They were really excited to be able to work here again.”

The city of Mission Viejo’s reaction was less emotional and more financial.

“Dealing with the city has been our most challenging obstacle,” Bone said. “It’s a little hard for me to understand. I mean we shut down a freeway in Cleveland and Jamboree in Newport Beach, and in both cases it’s a fraction of what it will cost us to shut down parts of two streets [Olympiad and Oso Parkway] here.”

As a result, the cycling and running courses have changed. This year, competitors won’t pedal the same path as Olympic cyclists did in 1984. They will wind through Santa Margarita before returning to the lake. And the finish line has been moved to the start area, which means runners will have to negotiate a steep hill down to the lake right before the finish.

“That hill is a bit of a concern,” Bone said. “We’re not too worried about the battle for one, two and three. We’re more concerned about the battle for 150 and 151.

“But the race will definitely be challenging all the way to the finish. It should be exciting.”

Scott Tinley, who won the first Mission Viejo triathlon in 1986 and again in 1989, is one of a handful of professionals who will compete Sunday.