Tyler Butterfield placed eighth yesterday in his second race of the year at the Monterrey ITU World Cup in Mexico.

And Butterfield was given a boost by his improvement in his weakest part of the sport – swimming.

The Bermudian who competed at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, finished the race in the hot, flat conditions in one hour, 45 minutes and 39 seconds and had splits of 19 minutes and 46 seconds for the swim, 53 minutes and nine seconds in the bike and 31 minutes and 37 seconds in the run.

His wife and fellow athlete, Nikki, said yesterday: "This is the first time Tyler has been in contention after the swim leg at this level of racing. He attributes his improved swimming abilities to now being back in the sport for 18 months – after the four years out he took to race as a professional cyclist – and enjoys being able to join in with the various swim squads in Boulder (where he is based) where there are up to four swim-squad options a day."

Butterfield was 58 seconds behind the winner, Joao Silva from Portugal, and 33 seconds behind Matt Chrabot from the United States who placed second.

Butterfield had a "middle of the bunch swim, and strong bike and run" in Mexico and as usual spent a significant amount of time on the front of the pack and in the wind on the bike leg. "Unfortunately when you are strong not many people want to work with you," said Nikki.

The Bermudian's group got to within 30 seconds of the lead group of seven – which included the eventual podium finishers – and he made several attempts to jump across the gap to the front group.

"Retrospectively these efforts may have taxed his running ability, but Tyler is happy with the way he raced. He likes to ride and run hard," said Nikki.

On the run portion Butterfield let a small group go. "With all the long distance training he has been doing in preparation for the Hawaii Ironman (World Championships) in October this year, the pace was just too fast for him at this point in his preparation. He was content to rely on his endurance training background with the plan to pick off guys in the second half of the run leg.

"Other than one of the guys who went out faster than him he moved up to finish in front of everyone who passed him in those initial stages of the run leg. His patience paid off, although he recognises next year when he is racing this distance full-time, he will have to make sure he has the speed to go faster from the beginning and hold it."

Butterfield was "very excited" to be up as far as he was considering he has been preparing specifically for Half-Ironman and Ironman races (four and eight hours races respectively versus the two hours yesterday).

"It is a great confidence booster for Tyler as the ITU World Cup style of racing is what will determine whether he will get to represent Bermuda at the Olympics again in London 2012. Tyler has two Olympic distance races remaining for 2010 – the Philadelphia Insurance Triathlon in June which is put on by one of his major sponsors Philadelphia Insurance Companies, and then the Central American and Caribbean Games in Puerto Rico in July.

In his first race 2010 at the end of March Butterfield had a superb second-place finish at the Waikoloa Triathlon in Hawaii.