Age no limit for Cameron Wurf ahead of the Ironman World Championships in Kona

Cameron Wurf describes himself as a ‘sports junkie’, and he should probably get credit for his international sporting career spanning over twenty years and three different sports.

At 41, he is preparing for yet another challenge at the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona on October 26, while juggling a professional cycling career with leading World Tour team Ineos Grenadiers.

“It’s a real privilege to have had the sporting career that I have had,” Wurf told the ABC Sports Daily podcast.

It can be argued that no one in history has found as many different ways to physically torture themselves through sporting activities as the Tasmanian.

Wurf started his elite career as a rower, winning an under-23 world title in the lightweight coxless fours in 2003.

A year later he took part in the Olympic Games in Athens, but during his preparations for the 2008 Games in Beijing he developed tendonitis in his wrist in 2006.

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“If you’ve already competed in one sport at that level, you obviously know you only have one type of sport you want to compete in,” Wurf said.

Wurf made his professional cycling debut with the continental pro team Priority Health Cycling Team in 2007 and moved up to the Liquigas-Cannondale team, where he rode alongside some of the sport’s greatest riders, including three-time world champion Peter Sagan and four-time world champion Peter Sagan. time winner of the grand tour Vincenzo Nibali.

However, when his career drifted a bit, Wurf gave up everything for a career in finance.

“It’s pretty hard to just drop sports when it’s been such a big part of your life,” he said.

“So (I) did a few triathlons for fun and eventually I got good at that, so the finance career was put on hold.”

After making the transition to a professional triathlete, the appeal of racing more regularly on the bike saw him return to the pro tour and accept an offer from Chris Froome’s coach Tim Kerrison to train with the seven-time Grand Tour winner .

That led to a contract with Ineos Grenadiers, where he combines his triathlon ambitions with horse riding as the main support for their main riders.

This year alone, Wurf rode the spring classics campaign, including La Flèche Wallonne and Amstel Gold, as well as five week-long stage races during the European summer.

Between the Tour of Slovenia and the Czech Tour, he managed to achieve a third place at Ironman Vitoria in Spain.

“I’ve juggled both sports for the last five years,” Wurf said.

“I never thought it would take much longer than maybe a few years to see how it turned out.

“And here we are. Five years later. I’m back on the (UCI) World Tour and also competing in the Ironman triathlon.”

Ironman triathlon becomes a sporting arms race on two wheels

Triathletes are a notoriously curious subset of the sporting cohort, masters of not one but three different sports, each taking a variety of tolls on the body, especially in the iron distance version of the sport.

An Ironman triathlon requires athletes to swim 3.8 kilometers, cycle 180 kilometers and then run a marathon back to back.

It’s a grueling, brutal and largely thankless way to earn a crust.

So why does Wurf, in his fifth decade, have to put himself through so much when he has a professional contract in just one sport?

“I often ask myself that, to be honest,” he laughed.

“I think it’s because I came from that background and when I did Ironman… of course I went back to training with all my old cycling buddies to keep the edge on that.

“I think then, while I was around them, the conversation kept coming up. Why don’t you just do some strange bike races? Wouldn’t that be great for your training? And that’s what I actually thought.”

However, when COVID hit, Wurf found himself falling behind the rapidly improving professional long-distance triathlon pack.

“In Ironman the guys became very, very good during that (COVID) period and very, very specific, especially the bike,” he explained.

“People really focused on that, and focused on what I had done, and I think the benchmarks I was setting were just that: benchmarks.

“But what they were able to do was maintain their incredibly high level of running and swimming, which suddenly left me behind.

“So this year especially, I had to take a really hard, hard look at what I was doing and do things better to try to catch up.”

As a cyclist, it is perhaps unsurprising that Wurf has broken the 180km cycling stage record at the Kona Ironman twice, in 2017 and 2018.

But in the 2022 race, Wurf saw his record shattered by the 4 hours, 4 minutes and 36 seconds of British-born Frenchman Sam Laidlaw.

Wurf’s personal best time for the ride is 4:09:03 and remains the second fastest of all time.

Of course, a triathlon is not just about being fast on the bike, but also about being able to cover 180 kilometers – slightly further than the ride from Sydney to Newcastle to put it into some perspective – and then a marathon in less than to walk for three hours.

That said, the current Kona course marathon record is 2:36:15, set by Norwegian triathlete Gustav Iden on his way to an overall course record of 7:40:24 in 2022.

To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of a parkrun at 6.30pm, eight and a half times in a row.

Overall, Wurf’s best time for the race is the 8:00:51 he recorded in 2022. It was only good enough for 11th overall that year, down from his high of fifth in 2019, when he ran an 8. :06:41.

The progress in quality and speed has been so rapid at Kona that completing the course in eight hours would have been fast enough to win every race around the big island before 2018.

“When I got into the sport, taking an eight-hour break was a big deal,” Wurf said.

“Now we do that on a training day.”

Wurf said the biggest improvement is in the bicycle area – and the statistics back that up.

Overall, the marathon time has remained relatively consistent, with Mark Allen’s 1989 course record of 2:40.04 standing until Patrick Lange ran a time of 2:39.45 in 2016.

However, over the past 35 years, the leading cycling time has fallen by more than half an hour.

“It really comes back to the bike. I mean, that’s just gotten a lot faster, the swimming… we’re not really swimming faster than we did 20 to 30 years ago,” Wurf said.

“And it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve really seen the running times drop, and that’s because the guys are good enough to get through the cycle route at the high speeds that we do. now at a more comfortable level.”

One of the biggest leaps forward has come as a result of heat-specific training.

“The biggest challenge in Hawaii is that heat, and I don’t think the heat affects the guys as much as it used to. I think we’re all more used to that,” Wurf said.

“I think that’s been a big evolution of the sport. The nutrition side, but also the ability to deal with the elements… We go into the toughest conditions and do it as if they are optimal conditions, so it’s a really exciting time in endurance sports in general.”

Wurf looks to Tom Brady to end long drought

An exciting time, but now that Wurf is starting to push the boundaries in terms of age, time may be running out to make his mark on triathlon’s biggest challenge.

The last Australian to stand on the podium in Kona was Sarah Crowley, who finished third in 2019.

The last Australian man on the podium was Luke McKenzie, who finished second in 2013, while an Australian has not won at Kona since Mirinda Carfrae took her third title in 2014. Pete Jacobs was the most recent men’s champion in 2012.

But Wurf doesn’t see it that way, he looks both near and far for inspiration to finally crack the Kona podium.

“I grew up following the story of Australian triathlete Greg Welch, as many of us did. He came close and then fell back, then he came close again, and he finally won it in 1993,” he said.

“I’ve gotten better every year and the last time, which was two years ago now, I dropped a few places (to eleventh place).

“You know, that might be enough, especially at my age, to say, maybe it’s just not going to happen.

“But all the people who support me – and Greg is one of them – hardened the resolve to want to fight back and see if you can prove that you can make it happen.

“It just happens that this time I’m one of the oldest ones trying.

But at the end of the day, once we get on the line, no one cares, we’re all competitors and I think there’s probably not many people who would count on me winning, but they certainly can’t. excludes me too, so that’s, I think, a pretty exciting place to be.

Wurf also highlighted American quarterback Tom Brady, who continued to excel in the NFL well into his 40s, as a role model.

“Tom Brady and I actually share a birthday, August 3. So I guess there’s something in it,” he said.

“Obviously he’s had a crazy, different, stratospheric level of success compared to me, but who knows?

“Maybe I can get my best performance out of myself in the coming years.”