Ironman: Puncture deflates leading hopes

Olympic cyclist Melissa Holt's hopes of gaining a huge lead at Taupo fizzled out. Photo / Getty Images

For a fleeting moment, Melissa Holt allowed herself to believe she might head into yesterday's marathon with as much as a 15-minute lead on the women's field.

Sadly for the Olympic Games cyclist, it was only fleeting and her hopes were deflated as quickly as the tyre she punctured 50km into the 180km bike ride.

She had been leading the women's field at the time, ahead of the likes of Gina Ferguson and Jo Lawn, and it felt good.

"I thought I could have maintained the pace I was riding to have a 15-minute head-start off the bike," said Holt, who last month won both the road race and time trial at the national championships. "They would have mowed me down in no time because I'm not a good runner but it would have been nice."

Instead, the 32-year-old suffered the ignominy of struggling to change her tubular tyre, which is glued on, and watched helplessly as others cycled past. It took her 25 minutes to make the change and by then a top-placed finish had evaporated.

The fact she rode hr 55 minutes, not including the time taken for the puncture, would have been a course record was little consolation.

"I couldn't get it off," she said, exasperated. "I have never been so angry. I was so fired up that rather than ride sensibly I thought, 'I've got nothing to lose now and went for it. In the last 20km I realised it wasn't such a good idea."

Holt finished 33rd in the women's field, in a time of 10 hr, 24 minutes.

She was just one of a number of elite athletes from other sports who can't resist the pull of an ironman.

Former world champion and Olympic silver medallist kayaker Ben Fouhy was also there at the start line, as was former Commonwealth Games marathon runner Craig Kirkwood and former Commonwealth Games swimmer Brent Foster led the field out of Lake Taupo.

Fouhy decided to enter Ironman New Zealand only five weeks ago and finished 51st overall and ninth in his age group in a credible time of 9hr 41 minutes.

The 30-year-old finished fourth in the K1 1000 at Beijing last year and was training fulltime up until January when he realised he needed a break from paddling if he was going to survive in the sport until London 2012.

"I'm pretty driven," he said. "like training hard and find it pretty hard to give up altogether. From a psychological point of view, I needed to spice things up a bit and this is fresh and exciting."

Yesterday was actually Fouhy's second ironman. Like many people who watch the gruelling event, he felt inspired to do it himself and finished the 2000 in a "pretty tidy"10-and-a-half hours.

Fouhy clearly has multisport in his blood, considering he won the team's race at the 2005 Coast to Coast with world mountain running champion Jonathan Wyatt.

"Ironically, when I first went to boarding school we were made to run," he said. "I just couldn't understand it. Why would you want to run? I got made to do it for long enough I got fit enough I actually started to enjoy it. I'm so grateful for that because it is such a big part of my life. When you get fit enough it feels bloody good.

"I'm carrying an extra 17kg around the course that Cameron Brown doesn't - that's a lot - so genetically I think I am just a bit too heavy [to do really well in this sport]."

Holt, meanwhile, has some pedigree already. She won her age group (30-34) in her first ironman last year, finishing in 10 hours 32 minutes, which not only qualified her for Hawaii but put her in the top 15.

She then raced at Kona and decided to give Taupo another crack.

She knows, though, that if she is to ever challenge the top athletes where it really matters, at the finish line, she will need to improve her running.

"I'm not by any means a fast runner," she said. "Five years ago at the Commonwealth Games we would ride the 1km to the food hall because we were lazy and didn't want to hurt my legs. It was ridiculous.

"If I can learn how to run faster, then maybe I have a future in this sport. I only started running four months before last year's ironman. Once I have a couple of years of running under my belt I might have a better idea of whether I can run a three-hour marathon or I'm dreaming."

Just like she was in the early stages of yesterday's cycle.