Featonby’s achievement at the Tongyeong ITU Triathlon World Cup in South Korea on Saturday, now places him a lofty 39th in the world on ITU points.

“I felt I under-performed in my last world cup in China so I wanted to make sure I stuck to my own race plan and got the best results possible,” Featonby told The Border Mail yesterday from South Korea.

“To say you’re ranked that high up in the world at anything is quite humbling and is something that I’m really proud of.”

Featonby said conditions were perfect, but not everything went his way.

“The race panned out how I expected, but there were some incredibly fast swimmers who really put the pace on in the swim,” he said.

“It meant it was ridiculously rough and I found myself not really able to move up in position after the first lap.”

The leader got out of the water in an incredible 16 minutes and 19 seconds after 1500 metres of swimming, while the top swimmers held their gap on the bike, taking a two- minute lead.

Featonby had to battle from 20th after the first lap of the run, eventually finishing the race in 1:49.40, with the eventual winner, South Africa’s Henri Schoeman, coming in at 1:48.15.

“It was credit to them as they really stuck it to the race and deserved their results,” Featonby said.

“My run was conservative and I had to let the faster guys go which worked great for me, I paced myself really well, bringing back guys each lap.”

But there’s no time to relax for the ambitious athlete who is looking at next weekend’s Neapean triathlon, Australia’s oldest triathlon, worth $18,000.

“I still feel like I’m getting better and better and with some proper planning I think I will be able to take it to another level,” he said.

“I work as an education support staff member at Wodonga South Primary School, so with the summer holidays coming up I’ll be able to get in some great training like the rest of my competitors who are full- time athletes.

“The plan is now to have a solid block of training over the next two months and come out a better athlete for 2015.”

Fortunately, Featonby isn’t alone in his ambitions.

“Before I left I had a generous act of kindness by a local businessman who gave me a great amount of support to help me get to South Korea,” he said.

“While the support was incredible, the confidence he had in me to strive to reach my goals inspired me to be the best athlete I could be, and I can’t thank him enough for helping me out.”