ROGERS — Fayetteville senior Maggie Pickhardt wants to follow in her brother and father’s footsteps.
She was right behind both Sunday at the fourth-annual Shark Sprint Triathlon.
Pickhardt won the event at Horseshoe Bend Park for the third year in a row while brother Willy Pickhardt won the men’s division of the sprint-distance triathlon. Their father Mark was third overall.
The area also hosted its first Olympic-distance triathlon Sunday but the Pickhardts decided to compete in the sprint race again.
“I’ve done an Olympic once or twice,” Maggie Pickhardt said. “I’ll probably do more Olympic-distance (races) next year. Eventually I want to do a half (Ironman) and then sometime in the future work up to an Ironman like my dad and brother.”
Maggie Pickhardt had the best time among the women in the 500-yard swim in Beaver Lake and led the rest of the race on the way to a finish of one hour, 15 minutes and 28 seconds.
Mark Pickhardt was a collegiate runner and started running triathlons later. Maggie and Willy, a 2007 Fayetteville grad, were both successful swimmers and runners and followed their dad into triathlons.
Willy Pickhardt, a senior at Arkansas, used Sunday’s race as a training session for some big upcoming races.
He’ll compete in Ironman 70.3 Steelhead Triathlon in Michigan next week and is training for October’s Ironman World Championships at Kona, Hawaii.
Maggie Pickhardt had the best times in all three portions of the race, which included a 15-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile run.
The triathlon was bigger than last year and Maggie Pickhardt is happy to see the sport continue to grow in Northwest Arkansas.