Ironman Austria 2007

The organizers of Ironman Austria and Ironman South Africa, Triangle Events, seams to have a talent of making emotional races. I realized this during my experience in Roth: Challenge Roth is a huge race but it had 10% of the emotions I experienced in Ironman South Africa. And I missed these feelings. Challenge Roth felt so much like business: everybody there was to “do the work” quickly and get out, while Ironman South Africa I enjoyed so much taking part in (2006) or just watching (2007). I have never been at Ironman Austria but my friends that were there, and over the media, it seams like Triangle Events created the same vibe in Klagenfurt as well.

The winning time by Marino Vanhoenacker was super fast and he credited the new two loop bike course for his 4:21:14 cycling split. It seams that the new race course is faster than the previous one. I guess, it is a tendency in Ironman community, to chase the result much more than few years or a decade ago, so there is a demand for faster and faster courses. Also with so many competitors three loop bike courses have started to be too crowded.

There were 14 triathletes competing under the South African flag:

Winton Stephen M30 10:20:18
Turner Bryan M30 10:23:37
Kearns Simon M30 10:27:37
Palmer Tim M35 10:57:06
Harwood Craig M40 11:22:11
Keet Wayne M30 11:23:35
Marais Leon M35 11:25:27
Van-Vlaanderen Nina W25 11:25:35
Rogers Evan M35 11:32:46
Rogers Tracy W35 11:58:59
Morison John M30 12:48:23
Steenkamp Etienne M40 13:34:22
Klesser Dean M30 13:47:55
Nucci Julie W25 14:44:34

Best placed is Nina Van-Vlaanderen 13th in W25 age group.

Ironman Austria attracted quite a bit of South African’s which is great and thanks to join organizer, Triangle.

If you are keen to take part in Ironman Austria 2008 I suggest you try to register tonight at midnight when registration opens. This is what the website says:

ONLINE registration: In the night from Monday, July 9th, to Tuesday, July 10th, the registration opens at 0.00 am at www.ironmanaustria.com.

This race has a reputation of selling out super fast and you need to try to register as early as possible. Hopefully Ironman Austria will have even more South Africans next year!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 4:23 am and is filed under Austria, Bryan Turner, Craig Harwood, Dean Klesser, Etienne Steenkamp, Evan Rogers, Ironman, Ironman Austria, John Morison, Julie Nucci, Leon Marais, Nina Van-Vlaanderen, Simon Kearns, Stephen Winton, Tim Palmer, Tracy Rogers, Wayne Keet, triangle, triathlon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.