A teenager from Steinbach will represent our province next month as one of the youngest athletes on the Manitoba triathlon team. Thirteen-year-old Chase Bueckert will compete at the Western Canada Summer Games in Swift Current from August 9 to 18.

Dave Lipchen has been coaching Bueckert for just over a year now. He refers to him as a very dedicated athlete.

"Chase is one of those super special athletes that you generally don't come across very often in a coach's career," says Lipchen. "Right off the hop I noticed that he was very focused, which is certainly rare, especially coming in at twelve."

Bueckert says his passion for long distance running developed after participating in cross country events in grade five. This pushed him to start running several times every week. Later that summer he got involved in mountain biking, which led him to triathlons the next summer.

"From that point forward I realized I would enjoy the sport and began training with the Windburn team," he says.

Lipchen says he recalls that first time Bueckert came out to run with the Windburn team. Being his first time out, and running through an unfamiliar park, Lipchen decided to run alongside Bueckert to make sure he did not get lost. Lipchen says Bueckert quickly passed most of the other runners and was left trailing only the two fastest runners on the team.

"We were still gaining on them and I kept looking at him and asking if he was ok or if he was just trying to impress me because it was his first day out," says Lipchen.

Bueckert made the Manitoba team after a qualifying race in June in Saskatoon. He says he was both excited and relieved that his training had paid off. Bueckert says he will continue to train hard and learn from the older athletes. He says his goal for Summer Games is to have a good, hard race, rank high in the 13/14 year old category and set a new personal best (PB). His current PB for the 300 metre swim, 10 kilometre bike and 3 kilometre run is 32 minutes and 43 seconds.

Lipchen on the other hand, says his advice for Bueckert is to absorb everything from this experience and catch the bug to train for the next eight years, in order to try to qualify for the next two Canada Games.

Bueckert says a normal week of training involves at least five hours each of swimming, biking and running.