Ironman Cairns and 70.3 Cairns Pro Start Lists

The official start lists from Ironman Cairns and Ironman 70.3 Cairns have been released.We will update this over the next few days. Some good fields on paper.

Any one of four or five guys could take out the Ironman with four obvious women in the running. We will see Michelle Wu and Liz Blatchford make their Ironman debuts against some experienced opponents.

Jason Shortis did not have any luck at the recent Ironman Australia so he has some unfinished business and a marathon still left in his legs. Clayton Fettell made his iron distance debut in 2011 over this course and showed his class at Ironman Melbourne recently after riding with Craig Alexander, Eneko Llanos, Marino Vanhoenacker amongst others in very tough conditions. His much older and seasoned competitors were very impressed with what they saw him do alongside them. Fettell is only 26yrs old and is still building his endruance and run legs. He will just keep getting better.

Chris McCormack has been training strongly and has been saving himself for a big race or two. We should see a very serious racing Macca at Cairns.

Luke McKenzie has been racing incredibly well lately over 70.3 and Olympic distance. He is running very fast. Could he make this title number 5?

The man that everyone will be looking to beat alongside Macca is Cameron Brown. He didn’t have the greatest race at Ironman New Zealand this year and will be looking for a big win at Cairns. He almost had the win of his life in Melbourne last year after one the the great Ironman battles with Craig Alexander. Not taking anything away from the 10 IMNZ wins at all but it was an epic race. Brown is also down to race the MetaMan iron distance race 7 weeks later in Bintan.

The men’s 70.3 is going to be an exciting race to watch. There is a wave of young guys coming through who are very fast and can swim/bike incredibly well. To name two or three guys means we have to name at least ten or twelve. The field is red hot. We will look at this over the next few days.

The women’s also will be good. There are a couple who have just done Ironman Australia. If they can back up it will be a great race. Marangon went well in WA with a penalty. Kiwi Sam Warriner will be hard to beat if she is in form.

More to come…