Luke McKenzie Dominates Japan
23 Jun 2008
It was a humid wet day in Goto, Nagasaki Japan as 882 competitors (only 96 of whom were women) lined up to race at Ironman Japan. Although the rain let up as the day went on, the roads remained slick causing athletes to be extra cautious on descents and corners.
In the men’s race, Mathieu O’Halloran was out of the water first, just over 47 minutes but was closely followed by blueseventy’s sterling athlete, Australian Luke McKenzie. [In his race report he was quoted as saying swimming in his Helix TST was ‘the best suit he has ever swam in! Thanks b70 team’]. McKenzie quickly claimed the lead from there, and that’s how it would remain the rest of the day. The Aussie built a solid lead over the rest of the field on the bike and went on to break the old bike course record which was held by super cyclist Chris Leito only to have Mitch Anderson (both of which are also blueseventy athletes) outsplit Luke by a few minutes to reclaim the bike course record. Luke held off Anderson in the run claiming his first Ironman victory. Nice one Jimmy!
Hans Muehlbauer cruised in just over a minute later at 8:39.
For the women, first out of the water was Sarah Pollett at 50:06, followed by rookie American pro Bree Wee. These two were the first out of T1, however defending champ Naomi Imaizumi quickly started eating into their lead. By the 107K mark, Imaizumi had a very slight lead over Wee; it appeared Wee wouldn’t let her go too easily. But Imaizumi eventually shook her off, took the lead and didn’t let it go for the rest of the day. Imaizumi stamped her authority on the race with her repeat victory in 9:33. She was followed by Wee at 9:37 and Pollett at 9:54.
RESULTS
IRONMAN JAPAN, GOTO FUKUE, 2008
MALE
1st Luke McKenzie 8:29:11*
2nd Mitchell Anderson 8:38:34
3rd Hans Muehlbauer 8:39:48
4th Hayato Kawahara 8:48:00
5th Han SeokJoo 8:50:49
6th Daiki Masuda 8:51:26
7th Masayuki Matsumaru 8:52:53
8th Shingo Tani 8:57:11
9th Takuya Shibata 8:58:32
10th Hiroyuki Nishiuchi 8:59:32
• New course record
WOMEN
1. Naomi Imaizumi 9:33:59
2. Bree Wee 9:37:12
3. Sarah Pollett 9:54:30
4. Saki Kubota 10:10:47
5. Simone Hakenberg 10:30:45
6. Anne Martin 10:37:05
7. Megumi Kobayashi 10:37:28
8. Sachi Kojima 10:38:18
9. Elizabeth Gordon 10:38:43
10. Margit Messinger-Walek 10:41:36