JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. -- “I want to take this opportunity to tell you about one of the most fantastic experiences of my life; participating in the 6th Annual Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM) Military World Games, held Oct. 2-11, 2015 in Mungyeong, Korea,” said Maj. Jamie Turner, 317th Airlift Squadron C-17 Globemaster III pilot.
“A little bit of history; this past June, the 315th AW sponsored me to apply for the Air Force triathlon team, I was selected and competed in the Armed Forces Championship as part of Leon's Triathlon, in Hammond, IN, outside Chicago, IL,” Turner said. “We competed against teams from Army, Navy, and Marines & Canada. I finished 2nd overall, 1st Air Force which secured me a slot on the United States triathlon team at the CISM.”
The CISM Military World Games take place every four years, occurring one year before every Olympic Games. The purpose of the Military World Games is to promote friendship amongst the world’s military personnel and true to that statement, we saw athletes in our athlete village from Brazil, to South Africa, to Iran and Russia and every country in between.
It's hard to explain, but the structure of a lot of the participating nations includes their elite and Olympic athletes under the umbrella of their military, and those athletes are permitted to compete in the CISM Games. As you know, the U.S. is not structured that way and we do not typically do well in these Games. For obvious reasons, the U.S. typically does better in the Veterans category than the open category and those of us that qualified for that category were encouraged to compete as Veterans, and that's where I ended up. They started the Veterans 30 seconds after everyone else, but other than that it was a combined race. The women raced in the morning, the men in the afternoon.
A few statistics: Over 100 nations participated, with over 7,000 military athletes from around the world; the U.S. Armed Forces sent over 165 athletes from Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard to compete in 16 sports. For triathlon we had a team of 8 women and 9 men, with 2 of those women (35+) and 3 men (40+) designated as Masters/Veterans, everyone else participated in the 'Open' category.
“Funny anecdote, the masters/veteran translation was lost on our Korean hosts and they typically referred to us as 'low performers' and even called us 'challenged' in the pre-race brief. We had a lot of fun with that,” Turner added.
Turner said that the shoulder-high waves breaking on the beach during her one-mile swim presented a challenge for her. “It was a very tough one-mile swim, followed by a draft-legal 25-mile ride. ITU (draft legal racing) is not my strength considering I came out nearly six minutes behind the lead pack on the swim,” she said. “It was nearly impossible for me to catch the pack, which were all drafting and I was cycling solo. I was able to maintain my bike speed but I could not make up the six minutes.”
“I started the 10k run with very tired legs,” Turner said. “I was able to hold a 6:50 pace on the run but that was not fast enough to catch the lead girls. We did however finish with a Bronze medal for the men's and women's combined masters team. “
“I can't describe how honored I was to be a part of the team; I had so much fun and learned so much from my teammates, many of them much younger than myself. Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen,” she said.
“Thank you all for taking the time over the past five years to wish me luck, offer kind words of support or say congratulations for all of the races I have competed in, it means more than you'll ever know,” Turner added.