Young triathlete Tyler Butterfield is many serious judges' favourite to win today's individual Tri-Gatorade -- but he may have some competition from a teenage American secret weapon.

Fifteen-year-old Butterfield enhanced his growing reputation by becoming the youngest winner of the Bank of Bermuda Triathlon last summer -- an achievement to which he added the Junior National Triathlon.

But one of the three New York clubs set to take part in the race at Clearwater Beach -- halved in distance from last year -- is set to unleash a 14-year-old wonderkid on the event.

"He's a bit of an unknown factor,'' says race director Patrick Hackenburg of the youngster, Will Vancarpels. "They've been trying to keep him a secret but I think he was a member of the US junior Olympic team.'' Nevertheless Hackenburg is backing Butterfield to take the title for the first time. "He would be my number one choice,'' he says, "although you can expect Neil de Ste Croix and Kevin Tucker to give him some competition. They tend to be good where there's a short swim.'' That, however, may also favour Butterfield, who rates the swim the least impressive of his disciplines.

The swim has been reduced to 750 metres from the 1.5 kilometres of recent years, with the bike down from 40K to 20K and the run halved from 10K to 5K.

Hackenburg explains: "We've had the same distances for several years and I decided it would be good to have a change of pace. People talked me into having a kind of Triathlon Festival and that made it difficult to have the same distance for both the individual and team events.

"Also it's the first race of the year and it gets people into the season. And there are a lot of new people taking part. About 30 percent have never run a triathlon.'' For Butterfield himself, victory may not be top of his agenda. He's using the race to start his build-up to the US Junior Championships later in the summer.

In last year's US race, held in Florida, he won his age-group by streets despite incurring a one-minute time penalty for a cycling infringement.

That penalty shifted his overall position down one place from eighth to ninth.

A successful Tri-Gatorade could be the first step to improving on that. "I've been training very hard for this,'' he says of the race, which is expected to attract more than 60 competitors, among them a number from clubs overseas.

"It's one of the bigger races in Bermuda.

"But everything is really a build-up to the US championships.

"Everything is like training for that -- to see what times I can achieve.'' Butterfield, who posted a time of 1:01:34 in the Bank of Bermuda race, is hoping to knock at least a full minute off that.

"I'll be looking for a time of around an hour,'' he says.

Beyond the US championships, there's the prospect of him going to the World Junior Duathlon Championship in Germany in August. But he says: "I'm still thinking about whether to go to that.'' And he dismisses talk that he'll be ready to represent Bermuda when triathlon makes its debut in the Sydney Olympics in two years.

"That's not my goal right now,'' says the Saltus student. "I'm looking more at 2004 and I'd rather aim for that.'' Whatever the outcome today, Butterfield will be back on the same Clearwater Beach course tomorrow for the team event, joining fellow youngster Jonathan Herring and national cycling coach Greg Hopkins against 24 other teams.

Today's race starts at 2.00 p.m. and tomorrow's team event begins at 11 a.m.

YOUNG triathletes joined Johnny Barnes at the Crow Lane roundabout yesterday morning to help publicise this weekend's Tri-Gatorade triathlons at Clearwater Beach. Today sees the individual race and tomorrow the team event.