Big Bathurst contingent bracing for a wet edition of Huskisson Triathlon Festival

Wet weather is almost guaranteed across all three days of the popular triathlon, and that's certain to add another element of difficulty to a course that already asks for the best from competitors.

One of those who always has the Huskisson festival circled on the calendar well in advance is Karen Tuynman.

Tuynman, who has helped put together the festival with Elite Energy, forms part of a big group of Bathurst women who target the event each season.

"We're all a close group who generally race together. This will be my 15^th year at Husky and it's great to see us all having a go," she said.

"There's a couple of injuries so we're all still racing but sort of condensed down into teams and a couple of individual entries. We might need flippers though, given the weather that's been predicted for down there.

"This year's race has record entries with 6,000 people. I do a lot of work with Elite Energy, so while I'm a bit biased, I think it's a well organised event and a really nice place to race."

Friday is expected to be the hardest hit day of the carnival, with a 95 per cent chance of 15 to 30mm of rain, while Saturday and Sunday could also see up to 20mm fall.

That will be coupled with humidity that will constantly hover above 90 cent.

"It's open water with quite an undulating bike leg, but I can only speak for myself and my daughter [Brooke], who's also racing like she's an old veteran of Husky at the age of 23," Tuynman said.

"It's going to be quite challenging. Everyone has their own strengths. We're all looking forward it. We know it's going to be wet so we've been changing tyres and wheels on the bikes and getting ourselves ready for it."

The participation rates for Bathurst women in triathlon has been undergoing steady growth in recent seasons, and that's carried over to this weekend's event.

"I'm very much the veteran of the group and seeing the younger ones come through is just amazing," Tuynman said.

"There's probably around 18 of us who go out to dinner there at Huskisson on the Saturday night. My coach lives in Nowra and he comes along to help the girls as well.

"It's a really close knit gathering for all of us girls."

Nick North is another Bathurst triathlete who is back at Huskisson after taking out overall honours in the 2021 aquabike division.

Bathurst enjoyed several other strong results in last year's races, including a third place for Luke Gillmer in the classic solo, a silver division finish for Hollee Simons in the ultimate solo female race and a top 50 finish for Jack Reen in the ultimate solo men's.

The action at Huskisson will start on Friday with the aquathon beginning at 11am and the ocean swims starting later in the day from 5.30pm.

The supersprint triathlon gets Saturday started at 6.30am while the sprint triathlons will start at 11am and 1.30pm for men and women respectively. Fun runs round at Saturday at 3.30pm.

Sunday sees the ultimate triathlon starting at 6.30am, the aquabike shortly after at 7am and the classic triathlon from 9.30am.

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