Adi Barbrooke has been in action once again representing Great Britain, this time at the European Championships in Israel. The competition was held in Eilat, on the Red Sea, where temperatures are in the 30's at this time of year. Fortunately Barbrooke's wave set off at 7am when the temperature was a managable 20 degrees although by the time he finished it was just beginning to get uncomfortable.

The race was set over the Olympic distance of 1500m swim, 40km cycle and 10km run. The swim was 700m out to sea, 100m across and 700m back to shore. Barbrooke was in good form sitting 50m off the back of the lead pack as they approached the first turn. By the second turn Barbrooke found himself in no-mans land ahead of the chasing pack but without sight of the lead pack. With no buoys to guide the athletes in and no other swimmers in close range Barbrooke swam off course but managed to recover enough to exit the swim in the middle of the field. "When you're 700m out the beach is really wide and at race pace you pick out a sighting point and go for it. Unfortunately my sighting point was way left of the finish, I'm just glad I was strong enough to recover as well as I did". The cycle section seems to be taking over from the run as Barbrooke's strongest discipline finishing the 40km route 10th fastest in just over 1hr 5mins. The cycle route was a 20km out and back on the main highway out of Eilat. The first leg was a gradual climb in to a head wind however this made for a very fast return leg with Barbrooke hitting a top speed of 66.6kph and rarely dropping below 50kph. Off the bike, heading in to transition, Barbrooke cramped up and it took the first of the four 2.5km laps to stretch out and get in to his stride. He crossed the finish line in 14th position in a time of 2:18:01.

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