On paper, the plan was simple. It all came down to Huatulco. The race in Mexico played host to the final World Cup of the Olympic qualification window as well as the Mixed Team Relay Olympic Qualification Event. All Richard Murray and the Dutch team had to do was secure either 1st or 2nd place in the qualifier and their relay slot in Paris would be assured. Except there was more to the story.
One valuable teammate, WTCS gold medallist Maya Kingma, was unavailable, while another member of the squad, Mitch Kolkman, still had to rise into the top-140 of the Olympic rankings at the World Cup or else success in the relay qualifier would mean nothing. To add a final dose of stress, Murray had still not yet received his Dutch citizenship that would allow him to start at the Olympics anyway.
“Going into Huatulco, the headspace was pretty much like this was the last possible moment to qualify at the Olympic Games,” said Murray. “I knew there was quite a lot of pressure on the line. It was a make or break kind of scenario.”
He had tried to lock in his personal Olympic qualification at WTCS Yokohama a month earlier. However he recorded a DNF on a disappointing day out. “The race didn't go very well, so we thought, well, we have to go through Mexico.”
If anyone had expected a smooth ride in Huatulco, they were soon to be disappointed. A rollercoaster of a race saw South Africa crash out on the first corner of the bike, Norway march ahead to victory, a close penalty call against Canada, and half a dozen teams left to fight for the final Olympic slots.
“From our perspective everything ran pretty well in the race until a little gap opened on the bike and I got stuck in No Man's land. When I came out of the swim, I was in No Man's Land so the second pack caught me and so we ended up being out of position out of my leg. Luckily, in the next leg Rachel (Klamer) managed to make sure that we were in the race and she literally saved the team.”
Indeed, Klamer exited T2 with an almighty task to close down a considerable gap to Zsanett Kuttor-Bragmayer of the Hungarian team. Nor did she have much time to do so. Capping the first half of a topsy-turvy weekend, Klamer nevertheless upset the odds and brought the team home.
Notably, Klamer had already qualified for Paris after a brilliant performance at the 2023 WTCS Final in Pontevedra. Murray noted that opting to race for the team in Huatulco compromised her Olympic preparation.
“She came down from altitude coming to race in Mexico so it kind of hurt her Paris preparation a little bit, but she really wanted to help me get to the Olympic game. She knew that she pretty much had to come in order for us to qualify.”
To create a perfect weekend, Murray stormed to victory at the Huatulco World Cup the next day while Kolkman earned of his best ever World Cup finishes, thereby attaining the Olympic ranking required to send the relay quartet to Paris. In a stroke, the stress, sacrifice and uncertainty faded as Project Huatulco was realised in its full glory.
“It was also special having a performance for myself because it’s been quite a while since I had a good performance, so yeah, that weekend was pretty much the highlight of my whole season.”
Around a week later, Murray’s Olympic ticket was solidified as his Dutch nationality was approved. “It needed to be signed off by the king as well,” he explained, “which usually takes about a year. I wanted it to happen, so I'm very fortunate that they managed to fast track it to make sure the paperwork and everything got done on time. The pressure was quite immense. Luckily after two years everything managed to actually come together for my nationality.”
Paris was to be Murray’s fourth Olympic Games, although only the third time he raced after he missed out on actually competing in Tokyo. In a slice of history, he and Klamer also became the first married couple to compete in the same relay team. However, in a similar vein to the qualification process, the final weeks leading into Paris were not all smooth sailing and Murray suffered an injury a few weeks before the big show.
“The major goal was to get to the Olympics for the relay, and then after that, obviously we had to do a massive training camp and we ended up overtraining a little bit.” Damage to his ribs meant that he could not swim for around two weeks less than two months out from the Games. “I couldn't really train and prepare how I would have needed to because my swimming was actually in a pretty good place.”
“And so I kind of knew that it wasn't the perfect approach, so I went there with the mentality of trying to take in as much as I can enjoy as much as I could. All the hopes were on the relay and I was almost thinking of sitting out the individual, but I thought, you know what, it's not every time I get to go to the Olympics so I'm going to take every shot that I can get, and went along to the individual race.”
Ultimately, the relay did not go to plan and the Dutch team missed out on the top-5 finish Murray believed the quartet had in them. Part of the problem in his eyes was that the final quartet had never raced together before and therefore lacked helpful data points when it came to figuring out the team order.
Murray was sanguine over the results though. “We've gained and had such an amazing experience and I think that's something that we'll go with us for the rest of our lives. So I think from that front, I'm still very grateful and very happy that everything happened.”
In the aftermath of Paris, Murray took a break from the top level of short course racing, instead opting for the Dutch Xterra Championships and World Xterra Championships. After a lengthy career in which he has won 17 WTCS medals, the 6th most of any man ever, he has found himself with time to reflect and figure out his next steps. When it comes to the bigger picture of triathlon, he is optimistic.
“I can think back to when I started writing internationally there were like a handful of races each year. And now it almost seems like during the summer there’s three, four events on every weekend. Also there’s the T100 stuff coming on now and the sport in general has dramatically increased in the last 10 years, which is wonderful to see.”
For their part, Murray and Klamer are still planning to compete at some European Cups next season and perhaps some of the European WTCS stops while also dabbling in other types of racing as their next chapter begins. Coaching is also on the horizon but the next big project is the conversion of an old farmhouse into an elite training facility.
“I grew up living on a farm in South Africa,” said Murray, “and the dream was probably to move back to living on a farm again in the future. As of March this year, we bought the farm here in the east of the Netherlands. It’s only a couple hundred meters from where we live now, actually down the road, and we ran past it for a couple of years. It was sitting empty and we were wondering what was going on and ended up actually being able to purchase the property.”
“We're going to have accommodation, a gym, maybe an outdoor natural swimming pool for during the summers. It's super quiet. It's perfect for training and all kinds of relaxing. So yeah, that's kind of I suppose the next step, the next step in the direction of our lives, and we want to see if we can give back in some way as well with doing some training camps. It’s an amazing project, but definitely very time and energy intensive.”
Such is the enthusiasm with which Murray speaks of the plan, it is clear that if Project Huatulco was his defining moment of the 2024 season, the greater plan that was already underway may come to define his near future in a much larger way. Once again, the plan is simple. Once again, you can be sure Richard Murray will come through.
