Link: http://www.insidetri.com/portal/news/news.asp?item=100944
Michael Jacques
This morning in Taupo, the tiny tourist town in New Zealand's North Island that is home to the world's second oldest Ironman event, 1400 athletes awoke to a picture-perfect day. The sky was blue, the rising sun cast long golden shadows on lakeside trees that gave not even the slightest hint of any breeze. And the lake itself, with the volcanic crater of Mt Ruapehu reflected perfectly in the background, laid still, untouched and bluer than blue. A more perfect day for an Ironman had never been seen.
And yet, looking out from the windows of their motels and rented homes, Ironmen and women from 32 countries gave a collective sigh. Today is Sunday. The 22nd edition of the Bonita Ironman New Zealand was held yesterday, when the view out their windows couldn't have been more different.
Twenty four hours ago the biggest field ever for Ironman New Zealand were standing in the pre-dawn dark wondering not what the day would bring, but if the race would even go head. They huddled in marquees and behind buildings and cars, hiding from a freezing south-westerly wind that whipped around their ears, blew bikes out of the racks and at times would blow as hard as 100k per hour. Down on the lakefront a select committee that included race manager Jane Patterson and WTC's Greg Welch and Ben Fertig looked out over what looked more like a raging surf beach than the tranquil mountain lake that Taupo normally is, and said, “No!”
New Zealand is one of the most spectacular and unspoiled countries in the world. But the remote Pacific Island nation is also one of the windiest, and yesterday it deemed to blow. Hard enough, in fact, to not only cancel the swim but to consider canceling the race full stop. At the advertised start time of 7am there was no way the race could have been run. But by 9am it had receded enough to run a reduced duathlon, and so the 22nd Bonita Ironman New Zealand became the first Bonita Half Ironman Duathlon.
Some athletes agreed, some did not. Forty-three of the 1400 entrants chose not to contend, but most accepted that there wasn't any other option. As race manager Jane Patterson walked away from the unenviable job of telling the athletes they wouldn't get to race their Ironman, Australia's John Van Wisse - one of the sport's best swimmers - stopped her and said, “Thank you for not sending people out in that water today.”
And so, at 11am yesterday, with the wind still whipping up a symphony in their helmets, the race got underway in time trial style. It wasn't an Ironman, but it did make for an intriguing race as number one seeds and hometown heroes Cameron Brown and Jo Lawn spent the day, as Lawn later said, “being chased like scared rabbits”.
The pros left at thirty second intervals and the age groupers after them got five seconds intervals that while unavoidable made for some interesting draft-busting later in the day. Several top age groupers would benefit from the competition and company that the close age group racing provided, with Taupo's own Duncan Milne clocking up the tenth fastest time of the day and California's Tyler Stewart backing up her age group title in last year's Hawaiian Ironman World Champs to end up as the second fastest woman overall in Taupo.
But up front Joanna Lawn immediately started to build a race winning lead while Cameron Brown just as immediately found himself under pressure. With number two seed, Ukraine's Victor Zyemtsev, a late withdrawal following a bike crash that Brown had also been involved in a few weeks earlier, the defending champion should have been a shoe-in for his sixth Ironman New Zealand title. But Brown is not a natural pacemaker; he prefers to let others set the tempo on the bike before unleashing his trademark run. However, to be sure of winning this time trial format he could not afford to sit and wait. He had to maintain his start buffer over whoever emerged to challenge him.
Enter Estonia's Ainalar Juhanson and Brown's own compatriot and sometimes training partner, Kieran Doe. While inexperienced in long distances both men put pressure on the defending champion from the word go. Especially Doe, who started two minutes behind Brown but after only 30k had cut him down to 1min 40sec.
But then the unthinkable happened. As Doe blazed along Broadlands Road, his trademark dreadlocks flaying behind as the south-west gale shunted him to speeds approaching 70k/hr, his aerobars came apart. A loose allen bolt appeared to be the problem, and a technical support vehicle was with Doe within 5min. But already disappointed not to be racing the full Ironman distance the young swim/bike specialist waved the help away and withdrew.
And then there were two. Juhanson was also pursuing Brown, but the big man waited until they turned to face the winds on the return journey.
At the Reporoa turn around he was still 50secs adrift, but in just 15k he closed Brown down and assumed the lead. Not surprisingly Brown let the big Estonian have the lead as they battled the wind back to Taupo. “The wind out there was incredible,” said Brown after the race. “On the way out I was holding 77k/hr at one point, but on the way back we were down to 30k/hr.”
As Johansson happily made the pace the two men were a stark contrast in more than just tactics. The two-metre tall, 95kg Ironman Lanzarote champion pushed a big gear, his face contorted with the effort and his body at times fighting his bike as much as the wind. Brown, 1.75m tall and weighing less than 70kg, sat almost serenely, spinning 95rpm like clockwork, his trademark poker face revealing nothing. As they neared the end of the ride the only thing the two men had in common were the Scott bikes they rode and the 10min lead they had established.
Not too far behind them Joanna Lawn was putting up a big solo effort.
The three-time Ironman New Zealand champion was always favourite among women and with her strongest discipline being the bike, the strong winds and time trial situation shouldn't have posed many problems. But leading out on her own with no means of knowing what her opposition were doing, the 32-year-old Aucklander was, shall we say, anxious.
Lawn had been aghast and close to panic when the time trial format had been announced earlier in the day. Like Brown she had quickly - breaking bike area rules it has to be said - changed her rear disc for a wheel more suited to the gale force winds and then sat on a stationary trainer to warm up. Great Britain's Bella Comerford was not impressed at this floughting of the rules and told Lawn so, which only wound her up even more. Out on the course she rode like a woman possessed, red-lining it all the way and screaming at anyone she saw to tell her what was happening behind.
What was happening was that Lawn was pulling away to a comfortable win. The late withdrawal of Australian Kate Major, third in Hawaii but down with a virus in Taupo, made her job easier. And so too did a below-par bike ride by 2002 Ironman New Zealand winner Karyn Ballance.
Ballance liked the idea of the time trial format, saying later, “It was so hard out in that wind, but the way we raced was really good. It's such a fair format, you're just racing yourself with no other factors.” But she struggled with the conditions, losing time to Lawn of course, but also Comerford, Australian Susan Peter and Japan's Yoko Hori. But everyone lost time to Lawn, who rode three minutes faster than Peter and five minutes faster than Ballance, then held on during the run for an emotional win.
As the first to start in the time trial she had needed to win by her start margin to guarantee victory, but almost 5min ticked by before Karyn Ballance came down the chute to claim second. When Ballance finished Lawn was still crying, more from the anxiety and relief after “racing like a rabbit waiting to be caught” than true joy.
“It was good to win,” she said later, “but I felt alone and exposed out there. Mentally it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And the conditions were probably the hardest too.”
Asked if Taupo's gale force day compared to any of her experiences in the infamously windy Hawaii Ironman, where she finished fourth last year, Lawn scoffed, “It was way worse than anything I've faced in Hawaii.
“On the way out it was 60k/hr all the way, but I could see the men coming back so slowly so I knew what was coming. On the way back it was 25k/hr. I was in the small ring all the way. The wind was scary. It was tough all the way but every now and then you'd get a huge gust and it was like hanging on for your life. Before the start I was really disappointed about not racing the full distance, but out there today I was glad we were only doing half the distance. Even on the run there were times when my legs were almost blown out from under me.”
Earlier, as he'd sat on the finish line with his heads in his knees Cameron Brown would have given anything to run another lap. “When we came off the bike I really thought I could put that minute back on him in the run,” said Brown of the way the time trial situation had panned out. “But it just didn't turn out that way.”
Brown has won the last five Ironman New Zealand's on the run. But this year he had only half the distance to make his move and an Estonian on his shoulder who was super motivated by the fact that he only had to hold on for half the distance. And that's what Ainalar Juhanson did, holding on as Brown ran harder and harder and harder.
“We were really running hard,” said Brown. “We hit 10k in about 35min and that was mostly into the headwind, but he just hung in there. He was still there at 12k and I said to myself, ?I've just got to go'. I ran as hard as I could all the way to the finish. But it wasn't enough.”
And it wasn't enough. Brown hit the tape first in 3hrs 31min 45secs, but to claim the victory he needed more than 60secs to tick by before Juhanson crossed the line. But as the crowd favourite lay collapsed on his back the Estonian sprinted into the home straight with arms raised and fist pumping in the knowledge that he had held Brown to within that magical minute to claim Ironman New Zealand.
“I knew that Cameron was a good runner,” said Juhanson later. “So I knew that to win I had to catch him on the bike, and then the pressure was on him to make up that time again.
“I felt no pressure,” Juhanson added. “Once we started the run all I had to do was hold on for as long as possible. He dropped me on the big hill coming back, and I just could not go any faster. But somehow I managed to hold on and stay close enough.”
But that was after the fact, when both men had had time to ponder their races; on the finish line they had both lay collapsed on their backs. With chests heaving and eyes scrunched closed in anaerobic agony, for the first time they looked almost identical. Almost... for while Cameron Brown's poker face continued to show no sign of any emotion other than pain, Ainalar Juhanson's agony was creased by the biggest grin in town...
... The biggest grin in a small tourist town in the middle of New Zealand's North Island that this morning is glowing again with weather so perfect for an Ironman that the 1400-odd who raced yesterday must be shaking their heads in disbelief that the scene from their windows could be the same place they raced just 24 hours earlier.
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