Ironman Champion Kylie Simpson Heads To South Africa For Next Challenge

After spending the last two and a half years training and racing at home, Simpson is looking forward to finally being on an overseas IRONMAN start line.

“I’m excited to finally get on a plane and do some international travel and put a lot of the training that I’ve been banking here at home to use,” said Simpson. “I’ve been wanting to go overseas for the last couple of years and everyone has been in the same boat and we haven’t been able to do that so I’m really excited to take it overseas.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to race some of the international girls, obviously being stuck here in Australia for the last couple of years it’s been very similar fields at all of our races, so the opportunity to have girls from every country there on the start list will be nice,” she said.

Nelson Mandela Bay in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, will host this weekend’s IRONMAN African Championship, with athletes taking on a 3.8km swim, 180km ride and 42.2km run.

Simpson is looking forward to the challenge of racing at the event for the first time.

“It looks like the swim sometimes get shortened which I would love but I love the format, the bike course is going to be quite spectacular and then the four lap run format coming from a run background I really like that, I like to see where everyone is at,” said Simpson. “For me the multi lap course makes it feel more like a race when you’re passing each other and you’re seeing either how much time you’re putting into someone or how much quicker you need to go.”

The 38-year-old had a year to remember in 2021, crossing the line first at both the Cairns Airport IRONMAN Asia-Pacific Championship Cairns in June and GWM IRONMAN Western Australia in December, securing her a spot on the start line at both IRONMAN World Championships set to be held this year.

“This is the start of a crazy few months, winning IRONMAN Western Australia at the end of last year and qualifying for Kona certainly took some pressure off the race schedule this year, knowing that I had both of those slots and now we can be quite select with where we go, not having to chase a qualifier for Kona,” she said.

Simpson will race in South Africa this weekend before heading to St. George, Utah, in May for the first of two IRONMAN World Championships. In October she’ll race the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, before heading back to Western Australia to defend her 2021 title in December.

“I don’t look at it as five IRONMAN races in a year, I just look at it as the next one, obviously now I’m just focusing on this weekend on IRONMAN South Africa and then we’ll come back and get ready to go to Utah for St. George,” said Simpson. “My coach is very good at putting the program together and the next couple of months will be fairly tight, we’ve done a lot of planning around the travel and the recovery and making sure that we’re going to be able to execute it.”