Strong Professional Women’s Field Ready For Ironman 70.3 Melbourne
A strong field of professional women from across the region are set to line up for IRONMAN 70.3 Melbourne in St Kilda this Sunday.
The 16 athlete women’s professional field features a host of previous IRONMAN 70.3 race winners, including Lotte Wilms, Hannah Wells, Radka Kahlefeldt, Sarah Crowley, Ellie Salthouse and Amelia Watkinson, with any one of the top six capable of taking the race win.
Athletes will take on a 1.9km swim, 90km ride and 21.1km run on Sunday morning, finishing on the IRONMAN 70.3 red carpet in Catani Gardens.
Queensland-based Dutch athlete Lotte Wilms heads into Sunday’s race with three wins from her last three starts in Australia, at the 2022 and 2021 IRONMAN 70.3 Sunshine Coast and this year’s IRONMAN 70.3 Geelong.
“It has been a long season so far for me but I’m loving it. My body is strong, fit and I can handle all the training and racing load very well, that makes me very happy,” said Wilms. “My body recovers well after every race which gives me confidence for the next trainings block and race. I moved nearly 10 years ago to Australia with a reason, I love this country, the sport culture, the people, the nature, the environment and lifestyle.
“They call it the lucky country and I agree, I love to race in Australia because the atmosphere is so good,” she said. “The competition here is always strong and when you can line up at a start line in any sport in Australia you know you have done very well.”
Wilms heads to Melbourne following a 12th place finish at last month’s Intermountain Healthcare IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship presented by Utah Sports Commission in St. George, USA, where she was one of the first athletes out of the water following the 1.9km swim.
“I’m feeling good, healthy and fit. We just got back from St. George, and I’ve had a nice easy recovery week from racing and travelling,” she said. “The atmosphere at the World Championship was amazing. The volunteers where great at the start, during the race and at the finish line and all the support when I got to transition one was overwhelming.”
New Zealand’s Hannah Wells is no stranger to having success on Australian shores, having won four IRONMAN 70.3 races here in recent years, and most recently finishing second at September’s Qatar Airways IRONMAN 70.3 Sunshine Coast.
“I’m feeling really good, I’m in the best shape I have been in all year after a consistent block of training at home in New Zealand, and so I am excited to test the current form out and see how I go against the quality field in Melbourne,” said Wells. “The last six to seven weeks at home have been so nice. The first half of the year involved a lot of travel for me and I was only just building back to fitness, so it felt like a bit of a disrupted and tough start to the year to be honest, and it took me a long time to get back to some good training. During this last block of training at home I have just felt really settled and happy, and I have seen big shifts in my fitness as a result.”
Wells is looking forward to taking on the strong field this Sunday in St Kilda, with this weekend’s event the first time professionals have raced at IRONMAN 70.3 Melbourne.
“This is probably the strongest field I have come up against in Australia with many great athletes returning from overseas in time to race this one, so that is really exciting to me,” she said. “I’m expecting a big battle with a number of top athletes, but I am really looking forward to that.”
Brisbane’s Sarah Crowley has had great success racing full-distance triathlons this year, claiming victory at IRONMAN Australia in May and IRONMAN Asia-Pacific Championship Cairns in June, and then going on to be the top placed Australian in seventh at the 2022 VinFast IRONMAN World Championship in Hawai’i.
“I was happy with my recovery from the IRONMAN World Championship, so we decided to add a couple of extra races to the season. The training has been going really well and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can produce off the back of all my World Championship training,” said Crowley. “We have assembled some of the Asia Pacific’s best female long distance triathletes, including a number of middle distance specialists. I’m fit, and when I race well, I seem to race well across all distances. I don’t plan on being the slow iron distance athlete out there, I’ll be having a crack.”
Crowley is excited by the opportunity to race in Melbourne for the first time.
“I love the St Kilda area. I’ve not raced any triathlons there before, but I have spent a lot of time in Melbourne in the past,” she said. “I can’t think of a more iconic spot to host a triathlon, I’m excited to race right in the heart of Australian sport.”
Queensland-based Kiwi Amelia Watkinson has had a mixed year after a broken elbow from a bike crash in Europe kept her away from racing and training for a number of weeks but bounced back well in her return to the sport last week with a second place finish at the prestigious Garmin Noosa Triathlon.
“I’m carrying some confidence from a good performance and second place at last weekend’s Noosa Triathlon. Of course I would love to win this one, but I know it will be a challenging one to get,” said Watkinson. “It feels extra good to be rewarded when you’ve had to dig so deep for quite some time. Sport is fairly honest and being up there with one of the best in the world at Noosa is great feedback that I am heading in the right direction for 2023.
“I’m excited for the ladies line up,” she said. “This time of year is always an interesting dynamic as we have a few girls coming off ‘A’ form at World Championships, building for IRONMAN, and some coming in a little fresher. It’s nice to get such depth at a domestic race.”
Like the other top seeded athletes Watkinson is looking forward to the atmosphere of a city-based race this weekend.
“It’s great to have this one within a major city, and embrace some of the crowd atmosphere,” she said. “It’s a fast chip road, flat terrain, and most likely moderate temperatures, there’s no doubt it will be a fast one.”
IRONMAN 70.3 Melbourne – Women’s Professional Field
31 – Lotte Wilms – (NLD)
32 – Hannah Wells – (NZL)
33 – Radka Kahlefeldt – (AUS)
34 – Sarah Crowley – (AUS)
35 – Ellie Salthouse – (AUS)
36 – Amelia Watkinson – (NZL)
38 – Kirra Seidel – (AUS)
39 – Laura Armstrong – (NZL)
40 – Melanie Baumann – (CHE)
41 – Anna Bergsten – (SWE)
42 – Tracy Clinch – (AUS)
43 – Chloe Hartnett – (AUS)
45 – Sarah Howe – (AUS)
46 – Renee Kiley – (AUS)
48 – Sophie Perry – (AUS)
29 – Sarah Thomas – (GBR)
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