Athletes from forty nationalities will fight to reach the top of the podium by swimming 3.8 kilometers, cycling 180 kilometers and running 42.195 kilometers. All this without stopping and in a maximum of 17 hours. At seven in the morning, the swimming test will begin next to the Hotel Fariones in Puerto del Carmen. Next, around 7.50 am, the Ironman will continue with the cycling tour of Lanzarote, which will pass through El Golfo at 9 am, through the Mirador del Río at 11.45 am and which will end at 12.45 pm again in Puerto del Carmen. Finally, the marathon, with 42 kilometers of route.
"For sports and tourism purposes, the Ironman is the star event of Lanzarote, and also, this year the record of registered participants is broken, with more than 1,200", explained Manuel Cabrera, Minister of Sports of the Cabildo of Lanzarote. "Lanzarote becomes a showcase for tourism, as media from the five continents come", added the president of the First Island Corporation, Manuela Armas.
According to the Minister of Sports, it is planned that the skipper of the boat of the Swedish team Ericsson will be in charge of giving the start. The winner will take a prize of 8,500 dollars. At the moment, the record is in 1995, when the German Thomas Hellvieger completed the tests in a time of 8 hours 35 minutes, and Paula Newly-Frazer, from Zimbabwe, did it in 9 hours and 24 minutes. In the 2007 edition, the Spanish Eneko Llanos was the one who climbed the podium with a time of 8 hours and 49 minutes.
According to the organization, a test like the Ironman Lanzarote requires a preparation of, at least, between 18 and 24 hours of weekly training. This triathlon is a qualifying test for the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. In total, there are 60 places, ten of them for professional athletes (7 for men and 3 for women). The remaining are distributed among the different age groups, guaranteeing a place for each category.
ACN Press
