Western Beach, Geelong, Australia

The Snap Ironman 70.3 Geelong, 2009 has been by Craig Alexander and Samantha Warriner stepping up from short course racing to take her first Ironman 70.3 title. Athletes were lucky on race day. The temperature had returned to safe and much cooler levels, allowing the race to go ahead as normal. While on the days before the event the ferocious heat wave had hit Geelong as well. As athletes were checking bikes in on Saturday the thermometer display showed 47°C.

Yvonne van Vlerken on the bike

For Samantha Warriner, it was her first Ironman 70.3 – following her 2008 World Cup series successes – and a dream debut. Yvonne swam her best swim time ever, nevertheless she was 4 minutes behind. »No problem«, she says and smiles in her soft way. »I shall continue to work hard on this«. Australian Pip Taylor led the women early into the bike, following a strong swim, but soon relinquished the lead to Yvonne. Warriner soon reached second place, at the half-way point of the ride. Yvonne could not get away on the bike. The big moment of the race came, when Warriner made a lightning transition, heading onto the run with a 90m lead. Over the next 21.1km, Yvonne wasn’t able to run the New Zealander down, making a dream debut complete.