third at the prestigious St. Anthony's Triathlon in Florida yesterday.

Karen Smith won in the 130-strong 30-34 age group, while Alec Jones triumphed in the 15-19s and Kent Richardson placed second in the 40-44 category.

Andrew Davies also performed impressively, finishing seventh in the 20-24 age group and Aaron Smith produced a personal best performance.

Karen Smith's performance was all the more remarkable in that she was suffering from illness in the build-up to the Olympic distance event comprising a 1500-metre swim, a 40K bike ride and a 10K run.

Her coach Dave Morrison said yesterday: "She's had a heavy cold for three days and to win her age group in such a big race is a great effort.

"The conditions were very tough too. It was very windy, so there were three-foot swells in the water and swim times were very slow. It was windy on the bike as well.'' Karen Smith won in two hours, 19 minutes, 56 seconds -- slower than Morrsion had hoped, but inevitably so in the conditions.

"We were hoping for 2:15,'' said Morrison, "but everybody's times were relatively slow. This race was mostly about preparing for the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, in July.'' Jones, a teenager who attends college in Florida, is in his first full season focusing on triathlon and he won the 15-19s in 2:18:03.

Richardson is a regular at St. Petersburg and last year finished sixth in the 40-44 category and proved that his hard winter training in the Sunshine State had paid off by improving to second place this year.

Despite finishing four places better, Richardson's time of 2:10:18 was actually four minutes slower than last year -- an illustration of the effect of the conditions on times.

Davies clocked 2:17:49 to finish seventh in the 20-24s in only his second race over the Olympic distance to delight coach Morrison.

Aaron Smith, Karen's husband, managed a personal best time of 2:23:34, good enough to earn 33rd place in the 35-39 age group.

The World Cup pro event on Saturday, which preceded yesterday's age group amateur race, was won by Olympic gold medallist Simon Whitfield, with Canada's Karen Montgomery the top female.