I’m preparing a longer post looking at the upcoming IM New Zealand race. For now, I have two short teasers.
A Look at the Course
Taupo has a course rating of 20:32 – compared to Kona’s 3:49. It is one of the quicker courses – about as fast as IM Arizona, but still slower than IM Florida by about 5 minutes. While the toad conditions on the bike are probably not too good, the course is still reasonably flat and there are no extreme weather conditions – in fact the climate sounds almost perfect for a good race. (Of course you have the exception with the 2006 race, where strong winds even led to a canceled swim and a shortened race.)
The course rating of 20:32 means that on an average day Cameron Brown (rated 8:37:41) is expected to finish around 8:17:19.
Male Pro Participants
Based on the list from the IM New Zealand website, here are the male professional participants and their current ratings:
Rank Name Nation Rating 1 Cameron Brown NZL 08:37:51 2 Terenzo Bozzone NZL 08:42:44 3 Mathias Hecht SWI 08:46:24 4 Keegan Williams NZL 08:55:41 5 Petr Vabrousek CZE 09:04:30 6 Hiroyuki Nishiuchi JPN 09:24:17 7 Tuukka Miettinen FIN 09:27:59 8 Scott Curry CAN 09:40:52 9 Brent Foster NZL 09:43:01 10 Rich Munro AUS 09:43:11 11 Heinrich Sickl AUT 09:46:31 12 James Bowstead NZL 09:52:15 13 John Carey AUS 09:59:37 14 Matt Burgess NZL unrated 15 Gavin Scott NZL unrated 16 Scott McGregor NZL unrated 17 Kerry Weeks NZL unrated
Based on the ratings, Cameron Brown still has to be considered the favorite. However, Terenzo Bozzone and Mathias Hecht are not so far off that Cam can be certain to win for the 10th time. After these three athletes, Keegan Williams and Petr Vabrousek may be good enough for a podium finish if one of the top 3 ranked athletes run into issues. After the top 5, the field is not very deep and the ratings are quite a bit slower than the top athletes.
There will be more ….
As noted above, I’m working on some more information:
- predictions for the women’s race
- details on the results I have on file for the participants
Please let me know in the comments if there is something else that you’d like to know and that I may be able to answer by analyzing the athlete’s previous results.