Half-distance races in Australia don’t always receive a lot of attention in North America, but last weekend’s Ironman 70.3 Geelong ended up being much more than an exciting race. Here’s what we noticed:

Ellie Salthouse is fit

Despite a slow start that saw her a bit further back than normal after the swim, Australia’s Ellie Salthouse (photo above) showed she will be a worthy addition to the T100 Triathlon World Tour Singapore race field.

“It was a bit of a slow day to get going for me today, not the best swim, a little bit of an average bike but I had to back my run out there today,” Salthouse said after the race. “We all came off together with a couple up the road and I had to back myself and had a great run, one of my fastest ever so stoked with where my running is at the moment.”

Salthouse got to the line less than a minute ahead of countrywoman Grace Thek, with swim leader Lotte Wilms rounding out the podium.

No Aussie men on the podium?

That’s never happened before at the Geelong race, and doesn’t happen very often at races down under. Sure, the defending champion was New Zealand’s Mike Phillips, but the rest of the top-10 last year were all Australians. Go back to the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and you had another international champion (Javier Gomez), but two Australians on either side of the podium in the form of Josh Amberger and Tim Van Berkel.

New Zealand’s Sam Osborne wins. Photo: Korupt Vision

Sam Osborne continued the streak of Kiwi champions this year, taking his first 70.3 win (he’d never actually made it to a 70.3 podium before), ahead of Great Britain’s Thomas Bishop and Finland’s Henrik Goesch.

The Ironman 70.3 World Championship is a big deal for the pros

Turns out one of the big goals for at least two of the men’s podium finishers was a qualifying slot for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand in December.

“I can hardly believe it, the goal was to come here and get a World’s slot and I feel like I’ve been close the last couple of times and then I saw the start list here and I thought jeez I’m really going to have my work cut out for me,” Osborne said after the race.

Osborne has decided to focus on long-distance triathlon racing this year rather than off-road competitions in order to compete in his home country at the worlds.

“This win is huge, I said this year that I’m going to really focus on the long course stuff, it’s not every year, and I will probably never in my career have the World Championships in New Zealand again,” he said. “I want to race the Ironman 70.3 World Championship at home so to come out, get a world’s slot and win my first Ironman 70.3 it’s crazy, I didn’t think it would happen, not this early.”

“Job done this weekend,” Tom Bishop wrote on Instagram. “Ticket stamped for @ironmantri 70.3 World Championship in Taupo this December.”

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A post shared by Tom Bishop (@tomwbish)

It would appear that the draw of Taupo qualifying spots was more important than the US$40,000 prize purse. The prize money would have gone down to eighth, with the winner taking home $5,500, runner up $4,000 and the third-place finisher $3,000. Bishop’s flights alone would have eaten up a lot of that $4,000 check.

Suffice it to say, the draw of 70.3 worlds spots and any prize money appears to be enough to lure a competitive international field to races.

Olympic medalist turns sights on triathlon

The race turned out to be the second go at a half-distance race for two-time Olympic medalist Mack Horton, who won the 400 m freestyle race at the 2016 Games in Rio, and was part of Australia’s bronze-medal 4 x 200 m relay team in Tokyo.

Swimming fans will remember Horton for the 400 m awards ceremony at the 2019 World Championships when, after finishing second, he refused to shake hands or stand on the podium with winner Sun Yang, who he had previously accused of being a “drug cheat.” Yang would be banned from international swimming in 2021 for refusing a doping test and tampering with samples.

Horton officially retired from swimming in January but, as reported by Trizone, competed at Ironman 70.3 Sunshine Coast last September. Now juggling a full-time job with training, Horton finished 70th in the men’s 25 to 29 age group in a time of 5:16:57.

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