Ironman Melbourne: A ‘Bout Time’ Championship Event

With only a few days to go until Ironman Melbourne all we can say is "about time". This was a phantom race for months with it's on again off again and multiple rumoured course bouncing around the triathlon world for what seemed like forever. And this week we are all about forgetting what has been a tumultuous time in the sports history with race companies going through change and takeovers etc and now focusing on this event.

The real win is this race. And it could have been placed anywhere in Australia. As a long serving country to this sport the fact that the Asia Pacific Championships lands on an Australian doorstep is just reward. Sure Melbourne is a great venue but given the years of service this country has given triathlon it is fitting that the new world order create a race that justifies the input.

With the new ranking system leading to the sport being made more along the lines of golf (without the prize money) Australia was an obvious choice. Triathlon now finds itself mimicking the likes of golf in that there are tour events (e.g.IM Port Macquarie, Lake Placid an UK that have 1000 points on offer) and majors (IM Melbourne and Frankfurt and NYC which have 4000 points attached). The fact that races are now points ranked means that the big guns will go out of there way to race them.

Leading to the situation we have in Melbourne this week where the best field has assembled in this country for some time. And you would have to think that it is purely points inspired. You would have to go back to the World Cup triathlon on the Gold Coast in 1989 -91 to find a better assembled field of endurance (we are not talking about ITU) pros. Names like Pigg, Scott, Allen and Tinley were regulars at this event. Since then there have been some big names to grace the endurance scene but of late the fields have been well down on big names in recent years and certainly a field like this puts this into light. Even the successful Aussie athletes were hard pressed to race in Australia.

The pros can talk all they want about racing at home etc but until this race was established and with it it's 4000 point tag the Aussie pros weren't too interested in racing early season races. And neither were their European/US counterparts. And that's understandable. Get the mix of races wrong (like Andreas Raelert) and your season is dashed. Get it right and the points work in your favour as a pro intent on racing Kona. So for the Aussies to commit to a small race with only 1000 points was not much of an incentive according to the pros we have spoken to this week.

An early season big points grab like Melbourne makes all the sense in the world. And seeing the likes of Llanos, Alexander, Carfrae, Van Lierde and Steffen etc ,makes this race the 'bout time' race of the year.