Aussie Matt Burton Prepares To Take On World’s Best At Ironman World Championship

Australian triathlete Matt Burton is preparing for a test that has been almost three years in the making when he finally lines up for IRONMAN World Championship.

Aussie Matt Burton Prepares To Take On World’s Best At Ironman World Championship
Matt Burton winning GWM IRONMAN Western Australia. Photo: Daniela Tommasi

Matt Burton booked his spot at his debut IRONMAN World Championship as a professional way back at IRONMAN Western Australia in 2019, with COVID interruptions getting in the way since then, and the 34-year-old is excited to finally hit that start line.

“2019 was when I qualified, it was such a lengthy process at that point, but it’s really exciting for me,” said Burton “I’m a little fish here in a massive pond in terms of the quality and calibre of athlete, but I feel coming off an Aussie summer it’s probably a bit of a dream for those of us who live in the southern hemisphere to race in a World Championship at this time of year and especially with it being my first time to line up at an event of this level.”

While the gap between Burton’s IRONMAN World Championship qualification and race day in St. George will be 888 days, he also had to contend with a longer than expected trip to Utah.

“It ended up taking me four days to get here, I firstly had a cancelled flight out of Perth, then when I was in Sydney they cancelled the flight to Dallas two hours before departure so it took me a long time,” he said. “At times I was contemplating whether or not I should just go home but once the sleep cycle kicks in and you destress once you’re sleeping well and I wasn’t having to force the training sessions and I felt like I was training at home, the temperature here in St. George is a lot like Perth, it hasn’t been too different, just a bit of altitude.

“Kona in Hawai’i is a very small town and when the World Championship is on you can’t escape the energy, whereas here I’m tucked away over to the north-east of St. George where the swim is and it’s been great, the American people embrace elite sportspeople like no other country,” said Burton. “I’ve actually trained down at the local high school on their track a few times and the football coach has been opening up the gym for me and has given me a key, from that point of view it’s really nice.”

A lot has changed for Burton personally since booking his World Championship slot, firstly getting married to now wife Kim, and more recently welcoming son Tom into the world.

Matt Burton training in St George. Photo: Korupt Vision

“I was talking to my wife about it the other day, when I qualified for this I wasn’t married and I didn’t have a son so there’s been a few large-ish life events that have gone on in the last couple of years,” said Burton. “Through the pandemic, as athletes and as humans, everybody has just had to learn to relax a little bit, the angrier you got, or the more frustrated you became, it wasn’t going to open up to you, you weren’t going to change how the world was operating at the time.

“That would be the only thing for me, this is super exciting and I feel super well prepared for what this course will demand from us as athletes but there’s always the following day now, I Facetime with home and Tom is only five months old and he now recognises me to smile and come Sunday post-race he’s still going to do the same thing so I think there’s a level of maturity now, you’re ageing and it’s not something you need to hide from because your body also becomes stronger in an endurance sense, I’ve had a long time to think about this race,” he said.

This year is set to be a year like no other for IRONMAN, with the rescheduled 2021 IRONMAN World Championship to be held this Saturday 7 May in Utah, ahead of the 2022 Supersapians IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Hawai’i this October.

St. George becomes the first location to host the event outside of Hawai’i since its origins in 1978, with the IRONMAN World Championship returning after a two-year COVID-enforced hiatus.

“It’s so raw because there’s no flora, no trees and shrubbery, just big rock and canyons, the course is either uphill or downhill, there’s no flat. I’ve been over it a number of times now and you start going up but you don’t realise how high you’ve got until you just look out and it just drops off into a gorge, it’s quite amazing,” he said. “You stop to take a photo and send it home but it just doesn’t do the terrain, atmosphere and feel any justice. Just a lot of red rock, it’s quite amazing, it will be a unique World Championship because of the case behind it all, it’s two years in the making, but it will be quite a spectacular one from an imagery point of view as well.”

Burton will be one of just four Australian professionals racing this weekend, alongside Cameron Wurf and Max Neumann in the men’s race and with Renee Kiley representing the country in the women’s race.

With border closures keeping him at home in Perth for the last few years Saturday’s World Championship race will be the first time he’s lined up against much of the field.

“I almost have to treat it like the others are complete unknowns,” he said. “If you let your ego take over in this race I think it will be an extremely long day, there’s a lot of eyes on the locals, but it’s just me, Max and Wurfy who are representing Australia and Renee on the women’s side so it’s daunting for us from that aspect, I was out on the bike the other day and the Norwegians had an entourage of cars following them while training, the reality is on race day is that everyone is on their own.

“You can have the biggest entourage in the world, and a big team behind you, but everybody trains to a certain level and the beauty of IRONMAN is that it becomes very mental at a point,” said Burton. “Training here the wind has been coming from every direction, every time that I’ve gone out it’s changed through the ride, one day it was really strong and if it gets anything like that on race day you could be towards nine hours instead of eight, there’s going to be some brave souls out there.

“When I first got here I thought what if my best isn’t good enough but that’s a fear that everyone faces, fear is part of what we do, it’s part of the nervous energy, I feel a lot better about it now,” he said.