April 2016

Update (Apr 27th): Brad Kahlefeldt announced on Instagram that he suffered a labral tear during his last long training run after avoiding a dog attack. He hopes to be back to running after a short break and then race IM Cairns.

Previous Winners

Last Year’s TOP 3

Male Race Results

Female Race Results

Course Records

Course Rating

The Course Rating for IM Australia is 04:32.

Race Adjustments for IM Australia

KPR points and Prize Money

IM Australia is a P-2000 race. It has a total prize purse of 50.000 US$.

Male Race Participants

This is the first time I’m including a “Consistency” in my pre-race post. It shows the fraction of races where an athlete has been about as expected (the first number), significantly faster (the number with the “+”) or significantly slower (including DNFs, the number with the “-“) and also the total number of IM starts. For more information have a look at my post on “Consistency of Athletes“.

Female Race Participants

This is the first time I’m including a “Consistency” in my pre-race post. It shows the fraction of races where an athlete has been about as expected (the first number), significantly faster (the number with the “+”) or significantly slower (including DNFs, the number with the “-“) and also the total number of IM starts. For more information have a look at my post on “Consistency of Athletes“.

Winning Odds

Male Race Participants

Even if almost all the athletes are from Australia or New Zealand, it’ll be an interesting, wide open race: Most of the top-rated athletes have been struggling a bit lately. Brad Kahlefeldt has only finished one IM, followed by a DNF in Kona. David Dellow had a fantastic sub-8 in Roth but also a string of DNFs. Dougal Allan has already been racing a lot this year, posting bike records in Wanaka and at IM New Zealand, but it’s unclear if he’s recovered well for another fast race. Defending champion Paul Ambrose is seeded fourth in my data, if he has a good day he’ll be the one to watch. Luke Bell is another great athlete, but he’s been quite inconsistent lately. Tim Reed is returning to the IM distance after a DNF in Western Australia – as a strong swimmer he’ll be in the mix for a long time, but he’ll need a solid run for a solid Ironman finish.

In addition, with Josh Amberger and Levi Maxwell there are two Ironman-rookies that make predicting the race even harder.

• Dougal Allan: 29% (2-1)
• David Dellow: 27% (3-1)
• Brad Kahlefeldt: 20% (4-1)
• Paul Ambrose: 11% (8-1)
• Luke Bell: 11% (8-1)

Female Race Participants

Gina Crawford is clearly the best rated athlete in the women’s field, but she hasn’t had many good results lately and seems to be dialing back her racing career this year. This would put US athlete (but currently Australian-based) Beth Gerdes into the favorite’s role. Beth will be eying Lisa Bentley’s run record (3:01:06) – and so far we haven’t had a sub-3 women’s run this year. Defending champion Michelle Bremer should be in front of Beth for the swim and bike, but Michelle will need another new run PR (she just ran 3:14 at IM New Zealand) to defend her title.

• Gina Crawford: 35% (2-1)
• Beth Gerdes: 33% (2-1)
• Michelle Bremer: 19% (4-1)
• Lisa Marangon: 6% (15-1)
• Dimity-Lee Duke: 3% (29-1)

Race Conditions

After a typically slow swim the new bike course proved to be much quicker than the old one. It remains to be seen if this was because most of the harder hills were cut from the course or because conditions were favorable this year – reportedly there wasn’t much wind. Even with the fast conditions we didn’t see any new course records – even if Ben Hoffman would probably have been able to find 3 seconds somewhere to break Gerrit Schellens run course record from 2007!

Male Race Results

After leading out of the swim, Marko Albert was at the front for the bike as well, even if he had some company with Bas Diederen and Ben Collins. Bas was the first into T2, but he struggled on the run, and Marko was leading the race until 15k. He then dropped back into fourth place, but rallied in the final stretch to pass Matt Trautmann and claimed the third spot on the podium. The quickest runners were Ben Hoffmann and Tim Van Berkel who had reached T2 just three minute behind the leaders, and Ben proved to be the stronger of the two. With 2:45:50 he posted the fastest marathon of the day, missing the run course record by only two seconds! Tim finished in second place.

Ben received an Automatic Qualifier slot for Kona, and both Tim and Matt should have enough points for Kona, as do fifth and sixth place finishers Boris Stein and Ruedi Wild (who had the best relative performance of the day, more than an hour quicker than expected!). Marko will still need a few more points to qualify for Kona.

Female Race Results

As expected Jodie Swallow was the fastest swimmer and in the lead on the bike. But at about 110k into the ride she fell hard without being clear what caused the crash. She was able to continue on the bike but had hurt her elbow and was loosing time to Annabel Luxford who was leading in T2 by 6 minutes over Jodie. Jodie started the run but had to call it a day after 8k. (I’m wishing her a speedy recovery and look forward to see her again at the front of her next race!) Bella had the fastest bike split by more than six minutes, but she posted after the race that she might have ridden a bit too hard. After Jodie withdrew Bella had a gap of more than 12 minutes to the speedy runners behind her, but that was only good enough for 20k. Kaisa Lehtonen proved that her second place at IM Barcelona was just the start and claimed her first Ironman title with the fastest run split. The second and third from last year took repeated this year but traded places: Susie Cheetham again had the better run and claimed second place, but Lucy Gossage’s third place only four weeks after her second place at IM New Zealand is an amazing result. Asa Lundstroem in fourth place had a solid race all day, she also passed Bella who ended up in fifth place.

As a Regional Champion Kaisa receives an Automatic Qualifier slot. After their great results in Kona and in Port Elizabeth Susie, Lucy, Asa and Annabel have enough points to be safe for a July slot.