All-WA test for athletes

Athletes will next week push themselves to the limit in the much-anticipated Busselton 70.3 Ironman, an event catered towards a solely Western Australian market because of the absence of interstate and international registrations.

This year’s annual Sun Smart event has a 1.9km swim leg and a 90.1km cycle leg, similar to previous years, with a new run leg course stretching 21.1km.

Race director David Budge said the event team focused on providing a COVID-safe event after months of liaising with Ironman, the health department, and the City of Busselton.

“It will be a little bit different from normal; we usually have up to 300 registrations from interstate and international markets. Unfortunately, they won’t be joining us this year so it will be a local WA-only event,” he said. “(On Tuesday), we had 810 individual athletes registered and 125 teams, which comes to around 1200 people registered for the 70.3 race, and on the Sunday for the festival events we have about 150 kids, which we expect to increase, and 50 people participating in the Fun Man event,” Mr Budge said.

Traditionally, the Festival of Triathlon is held in May but it was postponed to October this year because of the pandemic.

Mr Budge said he felt privileged to be able to put on the event and run it in a similar format to previous years.

The triathlon will take place tomorrow and the festival events will be held on Sunday. For more information, visit www.busseltonfestivaloftriathlon.com.au/.