By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor
While the top triathletes in the world regularly descend on Oak Mountain State Park for the annual XTERRA championship races, it’s rare for one of the top athletes to hail from Shelby County.
If Eli Wagner has any say in it, those days are long gone.
The 14-year-old Alabaster native finished fifth in the XTERRA Sprint triathlon at Oak Mountain State Park on Saturday, May 17, which comprises a 750-meter open-water swim, 14-kilometer mountain bike ride and 4.5-kilometer trail run.
What’s more, most of the competitors in the Sprint race were part of the XTERRA North American Youth Championship’s Youth B and Juniors divisions, meaning they were between 16 and 19 years old, at least two years older than Wagner.
It was his second-straight top-five finish in the Sprint despite being one of the youngest competitors in the field. Wagner finished fourth in his XTERRA debut in 2024.
Wagner’s triathlon journey began when he was in sixth grade and began competing for Thompson Middle School’s mountain biking team. His success as both a biker and runner led him to give triathlons a try.
“I figured I was a pretty good runner and rider so I figured swimming wouldn’t be that bad so then I tried out triathlons,” Wagner said.
After taking fourth place in 2024, he started training more frequently for the swimming leg, including two workouts a week. He also joined Thompson’s cross-country and track and field teams to grow his running skills while still competing for TMS mountain biking.
He would work his way into the varsity lineup as just an eighth grader by the end of the cross-country season, finishing 42nd at sectionals and then 117th at the Class 7A state championship meet. The latter was a personal-record time of 18:19.30.
Wagner also had a successful season with the mountain biking team, finishing second among eighth graders for the five-race season.
However, by the time XTERRA rolled around in May, Wagner was battling knee injuries that limited his training.
“For XTERRA, the couple weeks leading up to it my knees were not feeling great so I didn’t get much done,” Wagner said. “I mostly relied on what I had built up during cross country and the mountain bike seasons which running wise here it’ll be long runs, some workouts on the tracks, a couple easy runs, and then for the riding, just go out ride some longer distances or I do some rides on a trainer indoors, and then for the swim, I go to the pool, I’ll do swim about twice a week either work out or long swim.”
Even with the limitations, he still logged a top-five finish while competing against older kids.
Wagner believes the experience he has now against older kids will only help him as he grows as he gains experience at longer-distance triathlons.
“Since I did decently compared to them with them being so much older than me, I guess that gives me a competing chance against them once I get older and am able to catch up to them,” Wagner said.
Wagner’s mother Jamie Wagner says one of the main reasons he took to biking and running so quickly is because he learns well with one-on-one instruction. She said team sports didn’t come as naturally to him because he uses regular feedback to improve.
Working with Thompson’s volunteer mountain biking coaches and the track and field staff helped him make strides in those areas and set him up for success in triathlons.
“Throughout his childhood, we’ve been really told by many coaches that he is very coachable,” Jamie said. “He does micro-adjustments just based off of what they’re instructing him, and so the main thing is, like when he was in organized sports I guess like baseball or soccer, it was harder for him. When you’re coaching a huge team, it’s hard for your coach to individually tell you what to do, but one reason we got into mountain biking is because we started to see coaches recognize that if he has that one-on-one, then he does those micro-adjustments, and we knew that if he could continue to listen and be coachable, he can pretty much go anywhere he wanted to.”
Jamie stressed that she and her husband never forced any sort of extensive training on Eli. She said he is already very independent and driven to become the best as his faith powers a strong work ethic in all aspects of his life.
“I think he’s just a very hard-working individual because it’s probably also that competitive spirit, but it’s through his academics. It’s not just on the field,” Jamie said. “He holds himself to a very high standard. He’s very dedicated. He gets up every morning. He makes his breakfast. He focuses on nutrition. He plans out the training schedule. It’s not things that we force on him. He’s a very organized person, but it just kind of naturally comes to him, and we’re just trying to provide him resources to continue to develop that.”
Eli’s competitive drive will take him to multiple arenas over the next few months, including the Bump-N-Grind XXXI mountain bike race at Oak Mountain State Park from June 13-15 and the 24-hour Iron Maiden race at Tannehill State Park before his first full season as a Thompson varsity cross-country runner in August.
Through it all, he has one mission–win.
“I really don’t like losing,” Eli said. “I like being the best, so I just push to get better so I can be the best.”
