Longmont’s Oktoberfest Triathlon renaming trophy after CU Boulder triathlete

From the Daily Camera
The University of Colorado triathletes who raced with Alessandro Zarzur will never forget his name. Now, neither will future generations of triathletes.
The trophy given out to the winner of the Oktoberfest Triathlon on Sunday will be renamed after Zarzur, a 19-year-old CU triathlete who was killed earlier this year in a bicycle crash in Sunshine Canyon.
The Oktoberfest Triathlon in Longmont is the last outdoor race of the year for the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Conference, which includes CU and other colleges from Colorado and Wyoming. The winning team used to be awarded the Collegiate Cup, but it will now be named the Zarzur Collegiate Cup.
Race Director Lance Panigutti is a former CU triathlete himself, so he heard the tragic news in May when Zarzur died while cycling up on Flagstaff Mountain.
“The team has always been near and dear to my heart,” he said. “So when it happened, I had a lot of people reach out and ask what we could do. I didn’t want something rushed; I wanted something that the team could really rally behind.”
So Panigutti told the team and Zarzur’s family about his plan to rename the race trophy after them, and they were immediately on board.
“Because it’s the last outdoor race of the season, we look at (the Oktoberfest Triathlon) as a nice big party,” he said. “We felt this would be a nice way to celebrate him, to have something every year to honor him.”
When she heard about the plan to rename the trophy after her son, Zarzur’s mother, Hanan, in Sao Paulo, booked a flight to be there for the race and will be there to present the trophy to the winning team…
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