Mirinda Carfrae produced a stunning marathon run to retain her World Ironman triathlon title in Kona on the weekend.
The 33-year-old Queenslander notched up her third victory in the biggest of races and maintained her impressive record of finishing on the podium in each of the six years she has competed.
Although fairly well known in triathlon circles, there are few people outside of the sport who would recognise Mirinda if she walked (or more likely, ran) past them in the street.
Yet Mirinda’s athletic achievements are extraordinary.
The sport she specialises in, Ironman distance triathlon, is brutal to the extreme, and pushes it’s participants beyond normal feats of human endurance.
The race starts with 3.9 kilometres of swimming, that’s 78 laps of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Although in the mass starts of Ironman racing, your nearest competitor is just as likely to swim over you as stick to their lane.
This is swiftly followed by 180 kilometres on the bike. To put that into perspective, riding from Brisbane to Byron Bay or Sydney to Newcastle is (only) about 160 kilometres. All this is then finished up by running a marathon, which Mirinda Carfrae is spectacularly good at.
Last year Carfrae made up a deficit of around eight minutes to take the title ahead of British pair Rachel Joyce and Liz Blatchford. However her comeback this year was nothing short of extraordinary.
Carfrae made up 14 and a half minutes on Switzerland’s Daniela Ryf in the marathon, breaking her own run course record, completing the 42 kilometres in 2:50:26.
The way in which she overtook Ryf, who ended up holding on for second place ahead of Britain’s Joyce, was simply incredible to see.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aHt8WMB2jE
She flew past with five kilometres to go and never looked back, emulating fellow Aussie Craig Alexander’s three victories, and maintaining Australia’s magnificent record of having a winner in either the men’s or women’s race every year since 2006.
So my question to Roarers is, what other athletes can you think of who have achieved so much on the world stage without necessarily getting a lot recognition?
Or do athletes tend to get the right amount of credit based on what they go through to achieve their personal goals?
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