Posted: June 30, 2005

Triathlon: Race-day tactics the topic at QCR pre-race press conference

As race week gets into full swing here in the triathlon-mad city of Roth, elite athletes gathered in the downtown Kulturfabrik for the annual pre-race media conference.

The race will welcome 2,200 individual starters from 44 countries at the start on Sunday. As Roth Vice-mayor Peter Grimm noted, the Quelle Challenge Roth is certainly the United Nations of triathlon, with one-third of the athletes coming from outside Germany.

The elite race is shaping up to be another barn-burner, with all of the favorites fit and ready to race hard from the gun. The only one missing from the top finishers of 2004 will be last year's second-place man, Germany's Faris Al-Sultan. He suffered a knee injury in a bike crash two weeks ago at the German national championships in Potsdam and will be unable to take the start.

Five-time winner Lothar Leder, known here as the King of Roth, is fully recovered from an injury that hampered his performance last year. He reported that his preparations have gone well.

"I feel quite good," said Leder, who with his wife, Nicole, represents the yellow-clad Deutsche Post team at the Quelle Challenge Roth. "In the last two or three weeks I've been very concentrated on the race."

Leder said he's increased the volume of his training this year and also boosted his recovery time, cutting down on the hours he spends working in the athletic shop he runs in his hometown of Darmstadt. He's won four races in his '05 campaign thus far, including the half-Ironman Kohler Haardman two weeks ago ahead of last year's third-place man in Roth, countryman Timo Bracht. Leder said he's trained 15,000k on the bike since January.

"As Jürgen Zäck rightly said, I train to the limit," he said. "But I have upped my recovery time as well as my training time."

In the meantime, last year's winner, fiery Aussie Chris McCormack, said last year's breakthrough sub-8-hour performance here helped him achieve two of his three major goals: a win in Roth and a sub-eight time. (He finished last year in 7:57.) That third goal, to win at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, still remains but he said he's added another—to set a new world record on the course in Roth.

"It's fantastic to be back," he said. "This is my favorite race in Europe and probably my favorite race in the world."

In Roth, McCormack races in blue for the race's title sponsor, Quelle, along with fellow Aussie Belinda Granger.

"I'm here to win. I won last year and I don't think it's over for me here. I don't come to any event unless I'm ready to win. I think the pressure is on the other team. I have the title and they have to take it off me, and I think they feel that pressure.

"I'd like to come back to Roth and break the world record," McCormack said, adding, with a smile: "If I can do that, that's it, I'm done, I'll hang my shoes up."

About race-day strategy, McCormack said he's determined to race tactically this year: "My aim is to be very tactical—and to win by one second is enough. I don't need to win by 10."

Leder, for his part, said his race will not be a tactical one: "I will give everything, and I don't care who's behind me or before me. Of course, there will be some tactics in the bike race but I don't think this will be the case in the marathon."

The reason? Leder cautioned that the weather forecast is for warmer temperatures than in past years, and that may cause some athletes to be unable to follow moves on the run.

Then there's Germany's Timo Bracht, a rising star on the scene with a strong third place in Roth last year behind McCormack and Al-Sultan and wins at Ironman France and Ironman Florida in 2003. A strong cyclist, he said he's spent the year focusing on the run with an eye toward staying at the head of affairs once the race moves off the bike.

"I'm always delighted to come to Roth," he said. "When I come here it's always something special for me."

Another Aussie in the race will be fast closer Jason Shortis, recent champion at Ironman Western Australia and Ironman Japan, where he posted runs of 2:49 and 2:45, respectively. Acknowledging that at 35 he may be one of the older athletes in the race, the smiling Shortis said he was looking forward to a great day.

It's not his first time in Roth—he raced here in 1993 when the race was known as Ironman Europe and always had it in mind to return. Shortis said he traveled to the race to watch in 1999 and 2000 while racing in the German Bundesliga.

"I thought, I have to come back and do this," he said. "I know that very good athletes come here and they race very quickly, and I wanted to come here and test myself against them. I know that I am probably one of the oldest athletes here; but like a good red wine, I get better with age. The last 12 months have been the best of my career, so I figure I must be doing something right."

Shortis has traveled to Germany with his wife and baby daughter, and he said he always races well when they're with him.

"I will enjoy myself, and I will run as fast as I can," he said.

The women's race is shaping up as a rematch between last year's top four place-getters. Nicole Leder, whose dramatic 2:52 marathon gave her the wings to overtake Granger in the run's waning kilometers last year, said she hopes to have a good day. She's had a few struggles earlier in the season, with a fifth-place finish in Buschhütten over the Olympic distance and a DNF at the Haardman half-Ironman. So she decided to step back and focus fully on regaining her form for Roth.

"I hope I can repeat my result here from two years ago, when I struggled before the race and then had a great race here," she said.

Granger, meantime, hopes she can take one more step up on the podium and has been training in Roth for the last three weeks with her husband, Justin.

"I feel very comfortable with the entire course," she said. "I think there's a lot of time to be made up on the course."

Like the other athletes, Granger said Roth and its people already have a special place in her heart.

"My homestay opened up their house to us for three weeks," she said. "You just wouldn't get that anywhere else in the world. That just shows the kind of place Roth is and the kind of race this is. It's one in a million."

Ute Mückel, the 1996 Roth champ who took a stellar third here last year, said she's looking for a lucky race in her 13th start in Roth.

"People always ask me about my age," she said. "I always say I have nothing else do to, so I try to do what I do best."

She said she's been working with a new coach for the last 18 months and, unlike Lothar Leder, has actually reduced her training volume and is focusing on the parts of the race that are hardest for her.

"For me it's most important to be out there in the race," she said. "It's a special race, and I'm just happy to participate."

Heike Funk, last year's fourth-place woman, will again be looking for her standard strong performance. A mother of three, a schoolteacher and the wife of fellow top triathlete Harald Funk, Heike Funk has perfected the art of balancing work, training and family and reported that her training has gone well. "We were able to organize it in an almost perfect way," she said.

And watch out, future generations, because the Funk children are already entering the sport. "Two of my children have started triathlon in the meantime as well," she said with a smile.

The two French athletes in the field will be pressing hard as well, with Christophe Bastie, last year's sixth-place finisher, looking to move onto the podium. Roth newcomer Cyrille Neveu, former long-course world champion and this year's winner at the tough half-iron-distance Auburn International Triathlon and second-place finisher at Ironman South Africa, said he's looking forward to seeing the massive crowds on the bike course. As a resident of Alpe d'Huez, one of the most prominent climbs on the Tour de France, Neveu knows how inspiring an enthusiastic crowd can be.

In addition to the elites at the head of the field, the race this year will also host, for the second time, the world championship for firefighters over the long course.

Defending champion Margus Tamm of Estonia said he'll be looking for another victory but he'll have to hold off the hard-charging Roth native Michael Hofmann, who was second last year. Hofmann is now tickling the toes of the sport's elite with a third-place finish at the Kohler Haardman, only five minutes behind Bracht, who was second.

"About the atmosphere here, I don't have words for this," Tamm said. "It's marvelous."

Tamm has done the race since 1995—and has enjoyed the hospitality of the same homestay family for the past ten years. "I can't believe it, but it's true," he said.

For more information about the Quelle Challenge Roth, visit www.challenge-roth.com.

Quelle Challenge Roth’s sponsors include: Quelle AG, Deutsche Post AG, N-ERGIE, Newline, Nürnberger Nachrichten (Nürnberg Newspapers), Bayrische Versicherungskammer, Erdinger Alkoholfrei, Sparkasse Mittelfranken-Süd, Arndt, Mavic, INKO Energy, County of Roth, City of Roth, City of Hilpoltstein, Coca-Cola, Frankenbrunnen, Zeus Copy, Paladin, Hofmann, Jura Kaelte, Flor & Sohn, Spedition Heinloth, and BIESTMILCH.