Malibu Cocktail of World Champions for Super League Triathlon Finale
The Super League Triathlon Championship finale in Malibu is to serve up a cocktail of Ironman and Olympic champions. Well, this is a rum do if I’ve ever seen one. Tokyo gold medallists Kristian Blummenfelt and Flora Duffy and 70.3 World Champs Lucy Charles-Barclay and Gustav Iden will let the fun-shine on the Californian shore of Zuma Beach.
Super League Triathlon is intent on mixing up a Malibu Bay Breeze for their finale on Saturday 25th September giving Wild Cards to four world champions to really spice things up for the Eliminator finale of four back-to-back championship races.
The Eliminator
In this race format athletes are eliminated at the end of each discipline and at the end of each mini-race—after the swim, bike, and at the finish. This goes on for three rounds, with athletes fighting hard not be eliminated, whist at the same time managing their effort against fatigue.
Stage 1 – swim-bike-run (10-minute break to reset)
Stage 2 – (Top 15 finishers from Stage 1) swim-bike-run (10-minute break to reset)
Stage 3 – (Top 10 finishers from Stage 2) swim-bike-run
The introduction of Olympic Gold Medallists Duffy and Blummenfelt means that all six of the medal winners from the individual events in the Tokyo Olympics will be racing. Whilst Iden and Charles-Barclay will spice up the race having produced incredible wins at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships in St. George last weekend.
Both of the latter triathletes are well versed in the art of short-course triathlon with Charles-Barclay having come fifth in her debut WTCS Leeds race whilst Iden is a season elite on the World Triathlon circuit with the Norwegian having raced to 8th place at the Toyko Olympics.
In the women’s race will Duffy or Charles-Barclay be able to upset the apple cart and take the clean sweep away from Jess Learmonth who has taken three back-to-back victories so far at London Munich and Jersey.
The men’s race is a much more tightly contested affair and Blummenfelt and Iden will certainly not have it all their own way having to contend with Olympic Silver medallist and last week’s Jersey winner Alex Yee and current standing leader, the resurgent Jonny Brownlee who has consistently taken a top three spot in all the races so far. Then there is World Champion and winner in Munich Vincent Luis and Olympic bronze medallist Kiwi Hayden Wilde winner in London to contend with also.
Still, when you want to spice your Hollywood race cocktail up why not throw in a few more world champions for good measure.
Saturday’s women’s race will get underway at 13.30 local time (21.30 in the UK) whilst the men’s race starts at 14.45 local time, (22.45 in the UK)
The race will be aired on Super League’s Youtube—what they’re calling SLT TV. It’s also on TriathlonLive.tv (World Triathlon’s platform). You can see all the broadcast options in every country on the Super League website.
