Sunday proved to be a pretty special day for triathlete Keegan Williams, who took out the inaugural Wells New Plymouth Half Ironman.
Meanwhile Candice Hammond, who Keegan coaches, demolished the women's field for the win.
The race kept to the standard Half format with a 2km swim, 90km bike and 21.1km run.
Race day turned on lots of sunshine with strong wind for a challenging race on what proved to be a very demanding course.
A hilly 90km bike ride from Ngamotu Beach to Rahotu and return with a head wind on the way back made for some pretty challenging riding.
"Onto the bike and it was basically a big tail wind out to the turnaround plus the numerous hills to negotiate. I think the longest piece of flat road was about 3km,” Keegan Williams said.
"It was definitely a testing course. At the turn around Mark had increased his lead by about 20 seconds which I was very happy with, as he and his brother James are well known for their biking ability. And Brodie was about 10 seconds back from me.”
It proved to be a gruelling bike ride after a tough harbour swim, and riders had to dig it in hard against the wind.
Keegan and Brodie were nearly three minutes behind race leader Mark Bowstead heading in to the run, but that didn't last long.
"A pretty slow IM transition for me, straight up Bayley road and Brodie was on my heels, we ran the first lap pretty solid and cut Mark's lead down to 1min30sec and I started to feel very confident we would catch him, and me and Brodie would fight it out.
"The second lap we eased up and ran up to Mark at about the 12 kilometre point. Running along the esplanade it was pretty sheltered and it was getting very hot and sticky. Going into the last lap I made a little dig going over the top of a hill and felt Brodie slide off the back and then ran through the last lap pretty controlled to take the win. My first for TeamTimex," said Williams who crossed the line in 4:15.33.
"I was pleased to get the "monkey off the back" after my disappointing day in Wanaka a few weeks back, so next up is IMNZ in three weeks where I hope to improve on last year's performance," a confident Keegan commented.
Doubling also as a coach Keegan also had some other successes at the race with Candice Hammond (also from Cambridge) demolishing the women's field for the win in 4:53.19, and Grant Tuffery second in his age group by only 10 seconds.
Wells New Plymouth Half Ironman
Men
Keegan Williams 4:15:33
Brodie Madgwick 4:16:49
Mark Bowstead 4:19:44
Women
Candice Hammond 4:53:20
Ali Hollington 5:08:56
Tineke Berthelsen 5:22:20
