At last, the wait is over – after more than two years the IRONMAN World Championship is back and will go down today in St George, Utah.
Some of the world’s finest athletes (more on that to come) will bid for the biggest prize in the sport in front of a global audience.
This is the delayed 2021 race – moved to Utah due to the impact of the COVID pandemic in its normal home of Kona, Hawaii. It should return to the ‘Big Island’ in October.
For now though, the eyes of the world are trained on St George – where a brutal course awaits the athletes as they bid to rule the world.
Our live blog and the official event live stream will keep you right up to speed with everything that is happening during the race, and immediately afterwards we’ll post full reports and results.
The men’s PRO race starts at 0615 local time, that is 0815 Eastern, 1315 in the UK and 1415 in Central Europe. The women’s PRO race starts five minutes later at 0620 local time.
Who is racing in St George?
The field is missing some big names (more on that to come), but we still have two stacked PRO start lists.
Four-time champion Daniela Ryf, defending champ Anne Haug and Britain’s rapidly improving Kat Matthews will be favourites to win the day in the women’s race.
Norwegian prodigy Kristian Blummenfelt will be expected to go well in the men’s race, along with Canadian superstar Lionel Sanders and American ‘Big Unit’ Sam Long.
Who is not racing in St George?
We start with the likely pre-race favourites on both sides when the build-up to this race started. Lucy Charles-Barclay has a stress fracture of the hip while Jan Frodeno has a small partial tear of the Achilles.
Friday, and the eve of the race, brought yet more big-name absentees with the news that Gustav Iden and Alistair Brownlee were both now out.
COVID has stopped some big names taking part too – notably the strongly-fancied German star Laura Philipp, British raider Joe Skipper and Spanish great Javier Gomez.
Another German great – two-time champion Patrick Lange – is out after injuring his shoulder in a bike crash.
Originally posted on TRI247.com. Click here to Read More.