What a day!

The Weather

It was a field day for those people who raced at Busselton yesterday and a lot of personal bests were set.

The conditions were near perfect from the start of the swim through to the finish – a huge contrast with some of the weather that athletes have had to endure at a number of Ironman races in the past 12 months.

And also a huge contrast to what greeted athletes on race morning at Busselton a year ago. Here’s what Dingo said in his race report on the 2005 event, after waking up to a pre-race thunderstorm:

``Transition shut at 6am (half an hour late) and everybody walked to the pier and realised that the crystal clear water of the past week had turned into a grey ugly washing machine.’’

It didn’t get much better than that last year as the wind howled on the bike and then the temperature rose during the run. This year there was little wind on the bike, a huge advantage to starting and completing the run with as short as time possible in the sun - the temperature peaked at 30 degrees yesterday at 4pm, according to the race coverage.

A review of some of yesterday’s results shows how many athletes were able to take advantage of the conditions, least of which Team High5 Multisport.

In yesterday’s race, 16 men finished in less than nine hours, four more than a year ago. And while it may not be fair to directly compare the group of athletes competing this year and last, this statistic is just the tip of the iceberg.

The winning time this year, 8:08:57, compares with 8:27:36 a year ago. It wasn’t just the pro men who excelled though. The superb performance by Jason Shortis was matched by the women’s winner, Lisbeth Kristensen.

Kristensen had a 9:10:01 time, compared with 9:31:32 when Angela Milne won in 2005.

A range of pro and age-group athletes set personal best times yesterday. Charlotte Paul finished in 9:17:46 for third place, compared with the 9:47:28 that secured her second place a year ago.

In all, seven pro women finished with faster times than would have won the race in 2005. Team High5’s Lisa Marangon finished in 9:35:16 after riding 5:04:42, or almost 20 minutes faster than a year ago. She also ran almost half an hour faster too.

No doubt another year of training, with more time to finetune one’s nutrition plan, helped bolster individual performances, but even individual records weren’t enough yesterday.

Mitch Anderson, who set a bike course record of 4:18:07 yesterday, had to settle for second place in 8:18:01. A year ago he rode 4:30:40 and won the event in 8:27:36.

Among some of the age groupers the results were similar. John Mergler went 9:08:43 yesterday versus 9:34:43 in 2005. John Hill swam under the hour yesterday, more than eight minutes faster than a year ago and helping set the stage for a 9:30:53.

Both Mergler and Hill also had superb performances in Kona in October, where conditions for that course that day were considered near ideal.

In all, 103 Busselton competitors finished in less than 10 hours, about twice the rate as in 2005 and more than the 86 competitors with sub10 finishes in the race’s debut in 2004.

There were 779 finishers in Busselton yesterday.

Weather is one of those intangibles beyond anyone's control. Those athletes who were well prepared made sure to take advantage of the superb conditions.