Lucy Byram has started her 2024 season with a strong 6th place finish at T100 Miami. Being in contention for much of the race and clocking the 3rd fastest bike split of the day, she crossed the finish line in a time of 3:33:22. India Lee (GBR; 3:27:12) took the victory in front of Lucy Charles-Barclay (GBR; 3:27:42) and Holly Lawrence (GBR; 3:30:36) to make it a British podium sweep.
Lucy Byram toed the line in her debut race for BMC Pro Tri in the heat of Miami battling it out against a world class field. After the 2k non-wetsuit swim, Byram exited the water in 8th place, as part of the second chase group, 2 minutes back from the leaders.
Taking on the 22 laps of Homestead Miami Speedway, Lucy took her time to settle into her rhythm. Once she had found that pace, she started charging her way through the field. After 25k, the British athlete had taken over control of 5th place. She had managed to cut down her deficit to the lead to 1’40 at that moment in the race. Halfway through the bike, the youngster moved up another spot to 4th and reduced the gap to 3rd place to 50 seconds. Without overdoing it, Byram made work of that hunt towards the final podium spot and with 15k to go, she succeeded and made the connection with 3rd. Together with 3 other athletes, Byram reached T2 and took off for the closing 18k run battling for 3rd place. Lucy settled for 5th place early on but kept the distance towards 4th place small. At the halfway mark, the BMC-rookie was trailing that 4th place by only 30 seconds. The danger came from behind though as Ryf made a pass on Byram for 5th with 6k to go. Lucy kept giving her all to come home in 6th place and a finish time of 3:33:22. An excellent performance throughout.
Afterwards Lucy reflected on her strong performance: "So much fun to be back racing on the speedway in Miami and my first race in BMC Pro Tri colours. A solid 6th place for me at the first race in the T100 series. A few mistakes and tactical errors to work on but overall really happy with where the initial fitness is at the beginning of the year."
Teammates Lucy Buckingham and Clément Mignon took part in the race as well. Unfortunately, they both had to withdraw from the race as Lucy was feeling under the weather in the last few days leading up to the race because of food poisoning, whereas Mignon was suffering from severe cramping from the start already. Despite the food poisoning Buckingham wanted to give it a try. She accompagnied Lucy Charles-Barclay out of the water as co-leader and gave a fantastic account for herself leading the race with Charles-Barclay to the half way point. It was then that the lack of energy caught up and untimately forced Buckingham to withdraw. Lucy clearly demonstrated what she will be capable of at full fitness.
