Motatapu Triathlon to become an XTERRA World Championship Qualifying Race
Organisers of the Motatapu event; Iconic Adventures, today announced that the off road half-ironman length triathlon trialled at the 2011 Motatapu event will become a qualifying race for the XTERRA World Championships, held in October each year in Hawaii.
Event Director Geoff Matthews says XTERRA Motatapu will become the longest distance XTERRA race where you can qualify directly for the World Championships.
“XTERRA is an off road triathlon typically comprised of a 1.5km swim, 30km mountain bike and 11km trail run. XTERRA Motatapu consists of a 2km swim in Glendhu Bay, Lake Wanaka, then a 47km mountain bike through three high country stations to Arrowtown before completing the 15km mountain run over the historic Arrowtown.com Miner?s Trail,” he says.
“The triathlon proved to be a hit with the inaugural competitors, with a flat swim, a fast bike ride and an extremely tough run section.”
Geoff Matthews says for South Island triathletes it will become the only South Island race in any triathlon distance that you can qualify directly for a World Championship. There will be 10 qualifying spots available.
XTERRA Motatapu and Paymark XTERRA Rotorua Festival are the sole two XTERRA triathlon events held in New Zealand, with the Rotorua event being the National Championships and Motatapu XTERRA the South Island Championships. There are also XTERRA trail running events held in Wellington and Auckland.
The sport of XTERRA was born on Maui in 1996, and after 15 years on Maui?s south shore, the XTERRA World Championship is this year headed for a new course, on the north side of the island based at the Kapalua Resort.
XTERRA is the fastest-growing multisport event in the world. The XTERRA Points Series consists of more than 50 races. There is also a XTERRA Epic which is a longer distance event offering course distances similar to XTERRA Motatapu. US. Amateur competitors compete at up to four events to earn points toward an XTERRA Regional Championship title. With the title comes an invitation to compete for a national title at the XTERRA
USA Championship in Snowbasin, Utah.
The XTERRA Global Tour holds championship events in Saipan, New Zealand, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Canada, the Philippines, and Germany. Top-ranking athletes from these national championships are invited to compete at the XTERRA World Championship each October in Maui with athletes who qualified in the U.S. series.
Notable New Zealanders to compete at XTERRA include Olympic Champion Hamish Carter, who won the world professional title in 2006, and Wellingtonian Catherine Dunn, who has won multiple World Age Group titles.
Iconic Adventures Director Tom Pryde, who has been instrumental in bringing a number of high profile races to Queenstown; including the ITU World Triathlon Championships in 2005, says he is delighted to bring a world championship-qualifying event to the area.
“It?s a great boost for triathlon and multisport in this region, and will give triathletes and multisporters of all ages something to aim at,” he says.
Event Director Geoff Matthews, who is the only triathlete to represent New Zealand at both Summer and Winter World Triathlon Championships as well as the World Ironman Triathlon Championships, says all three Iconic Adventures Directors have a long history with triathlon and multisport.
“We still organise the longest continuous running triathlon in New Zealand, and one of the longest running triathlons in the world, the Salomon Lake Hayes Triathlon, which Tom Pryde and Barry Robertson first ran in 1983.”
XTERRA Motatapu will be held in conjunction with the four other Motatapu events on 10th March 2012 and will be both an individual and a team event with a maximum field of 150 individuals and 150 teams.
Other Motatapu events held on the same day include; New Zealand?s largest off road mountain bike event, as well as the third largest marathon to be held in New Zealand each year, the Icebreaker 42.2km off road marathon, the 49km R&R Sport Adventure Race, and the Arrowtown.com Miner?s Trail 15km mountain run.
Entries are exclusively online and open at 9am on the 1st July 2011 at www.motatapu.com.
Image: Olympic Champion and former XTERRA World Champion, Hamish Carter staring the 2011 Motatapu Off Road Triathlon.
Photo credit: Camilla Stoddart