Taupo is ready for IM NZ
By Barry Siff
March 1, 2007 -- With a history as rich as the country itself, Ironman New Zealand's 23rd edition is set to go on Saturday, March 3, with over 1,100 competitors from 37 countries. Despite a canceled swim due to extreme winds in 2006, a record number of New Zealanders are entered. Notably, just under 40 percent of those entered for the Saturday race are first-time Ironman competitors.
5-peat for Lawn?
Lawn, the feisty and fun-loving 33-year-old from Auckland, is looking for her fifth straight Ironman New Zealand championship. She is feeling strong coming into this year’s race.
Taupo is my second home, and it’s a special race for me,” says Lawn. “I've won it four times in a row. I know the course well, and the support here is unbelievable." Lawn's course record of 9:17:56 set in 2003 still stands, but to win her fifth she will have to defeat a very strong contingent from the United States.
Heather Gollnick started 2007 with a strong second-place finish to Canada’s Lisa Bentley at the January half-Ironman in Pucon, Chile, and has looked loose and relaxed running, biking and smiling around Lake Taupo this week. Hillary Biscay, at 27, competed in four Ironman races in 2006, finishing in the top five in all, including a second place at Ironman Wisconsin. Incredibly, she has already done one Ironman-distance race this year: the Challenge Queenstown, finishing a respectable third. The third North American expected to contend is Kim Loeffler, who also raced strongly in Pucon, and has a second-place finish at Ironman Lake Placid (2005) to her credit.
Brown faces stiff competition
Among the men, Denmark’s Torbjorn Sindballe and Australia’s Luke Bell are out to stop Brown's reign at this race. Brown not only holds the course record of 8:20:15, set in 2005 but he also has won five straight times in Taupo, not including the storm-shortened duathlon version of he race in 2006. Estonia's Ain-Alar Juhanson, a two-time Ironman Lanzarote champion, won the race in Taupo last year and has returned to defend his title. "I have dedicated the past year to swimming, spending two months in Melbourne with John Van Wisse, a long-distance swim specialist," said Juhanson on Thursday. "I should follow the main pack, which should be two to three minutes from the lead." And from there, he feels his strong cycling and running can lead him to a repeat victory.
But Brown will not be Juhanson's only competition on Saturday. Coming off his second ITU Long Distance World Championship in November (over Australian star Craig Alexander), Sindballe feels his problems with injuries are behind him. A trip to the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine for a 3D bike fit and run-gait analysis "was definitely successful, since it cured all my pelvis troubles, and I have not had any injuries since," noted Sindballe. His 86.8 VO2 max engine is ready to pop one on Saturday.
Likewise, a hungry Bell is ready to take center stage, having just edged out Brown in the 2006 Hawaii Ironman, finishing seventh overall. Brown has a great deal of respect for the Australian star: "He has no weaknesses. Luke is a very strong swimmer and biker. His running strength has been over the half-Ironman distance. But then again, he ran away from me in Hawaii. If I am not at my best, I will get beaten," concedes Brown.
With the weather last year such a factor, people all week have been watching the skies. Interestingly, Taupo has just come off its third-driest February in history, and while some light rain has fallen this week, the weather forecast for Ironman Saturday looks perfect.