Annual Awards

History of the Awards

Originally presented at the annual COLT Christmas Social event, The COLT Awards have developed into a separate and prestigious event in the club’s annual calendar. They are now usually held in October and are presented by the Club Captain with support from members of the committee.

The first award was the Captain’s Big Banana Award (latterly President’s Big Banana Award) chosen by the club captain (now President) using whatever criteria they wished (this award is no longer presented) . This was soon expanded to the Man and Woman’s performance of the year and in 2019 evolved into COLT Men’s Champion and COLT Women’s Champion, the latter being named the Louise Kelly Memorial Award after Louise who was the first woman to win the award twice (read about Louise here) . This award is chosen by the committee and although usually based on race performances over a season, this isn’t always the case, as witnessed by Lisa Preston’s 2015 award for her incredible fundraising efforts and encouragement to get women cycling.

More recently, the Stabiliser Award (first awarded in 2013) has been established for mishaps while training or racing. Chris Lawson generously decided to remove himself from further consideration of the award after his first win in 2013 because he felt that it should be shared around the club and not awarded to him every year. Note that in some years the Stabiliser Award recipient has been the victim of serious injury. The committee always consulted potential award winners before presenting them with the award. More recently, the committee decided to retire the award.

First awarded in 2014, the Best Supporter award recognises the fact that behind every triathlete and triathlon club there are a group of unsung heroes without whom we would not be able to perform the way we do. This award is now known as the Sheila Davies Memorial Award.

New Awards

In order to recognise the growing membership, some new awards were instigated in 2017. These included, Best Newcomer, Outstanding Individual Race Performance and the Spanner Award for technical incompetence (a suggestion that this award be given to Andy Ley for life was narrowly defeated at Committee). Further award categories have since been added including the Resilience Award for determination in the face of adversity and The Order of the Golden Spanner awarded to non COLTs for their support of the club. This was first awarded to Steve Smithson, cycle mechanic extraordinaire who kept large numbers of club members on the road, often dealing with last minute panics, disasters and self inflicted mechanical catastrophes, with equanimity.

Lockdown

2020, the year of lockdown was an unusual one in COLT history with some awards not being awarded and some extra “alternative awards” added. The best example of this was Chris Clarke’s “Outstanding Individual Alternative Race Performance” for Lakesman in Lockdown in which “T1” famously consisted of a Full English Breakfast!

The Class of 2025

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The Class of 2024

The 2024 awards saw a popular return to the Kings Arms Hotel in Lancaster. For the 4th time, Nick Hewitt was Men’s Champion awards after retaining his British Standard Distance Age Group title at Windsor. Kath Pollard won the Louise Kelly Memorial Award as COLT Women’s Champion after a stellar season racing for Team GB at the World Championships in Marbella.

Some of the Class of ’24 COLT Award Winners