Multisports: Title held firmly in iron grip

Cameron Brown can't imagine a summer without competing in New Zealand Ironman. Photo / Doug Sherring

Every week for almost 10 years, Cameron Brown rode the equivalent of Wellington to the Bay of Islands, ran from Auckland to Rotorua and swam from the Viaduct to Waiheke Island.

His cycling load alone (900km) was close to what a Tour de France rider puts himself through.

It was punishing, but it needed to be so he could swim, cycle and run for close to nine hours at top speed.

Recently, though, Brown has cut back. It's more about quality rather than quantity, about becoming faster. And he has afforded himself the luxury of cutting out the equivalent of the Auckland to Bay of Islands cycle leg. Small luxury.

Brown isn't going soft. Far from it.

It's what he can afford to do after thousands of kilometres in his sinewy 36-year-old body and it's what he needs to do if he is to ever win the Holy Grail of ironman, Hawaii.

It is the Olympic Games of his sport and he has never quite been, in Olympic parlance, the fastest, highest, strongest. He has two seconds and two thirds from Kona but he has never climbed the highest step on the podium.

Ironman athletes can seriously contemplate racing three events only in a calendar year - it takes that much out of them - but Brown will forgo his usual pilgrimage to Germany for the European championships in the hope of doing well at Hawaii.

"This year I'm going to do things a little differently and I won't have a mid-season ironman," he says.

"My coach, Brendon Cameron, has been trying to get me to do it for a couple of year so I put all of my eggs in one basket for Hawaii. We will see if that helps.

"Hawaii is one goal that has never been fulfilled. It's not going to haunt me [if I don't win]. I'm not going to take it to my grave... but it would be fantastic for my career.

"I just have to have a day where it all goes perfectly. I've never had a day where I've felt like that. It's just one day of the year that you have to get right and so much can go wrong like illness or injury. And it's very, very hard."

The trade winds which whip off the Pacific Ocean rival anything Wellington can muster and the Energy Lab, where temperatures often top 40 degrees, in the lava fields is ironically named.

It was actually a punishing experience in Hawaii in 2001 that turned Brown from a promising ironman athlete into a flourishing one.

He finished 26th in 2000, having gone into the race believing he would at least finish inside the top 10. He had finished second at Taupo and an impressive third in Germany but, as much as he tried to push the accelerator, the fuel injection wasn't working.

"That race was the turning point," Brown says. "I got smashed. I was under-prepared. I realised something needed to change and that's when I approached Scott Molina to coach me. He won [Hawaii] in 1988 and was one of the hardest trainers around.

"Scott opened my eyes to what I had to do and virtually doubled my training overnight. When I first saw the schedule, I thought I couldn't do it. I went from 25 hours to 40 hours a week."

The turnaround, though, made it all worth it. He finished second at Kona the following year and, crucially, started an incredible sequence at a place called Taupo.



AS A boy, Cameron Brown would sit on the back of his father's ute and watch, fascinated, as athletes ran past during Ironman New Zealand.

When he was old enough to drive, he would borrow the ute, load up a handful of mates and get a good vantage point.

These days, Brown still goes to Ironman New Zealand - and wins.

Seven consecutive victories, to be precise (2006 doesn't count, when he finished second, because the swim was cancelled and the cycle and run legs halved due to inclement weather).

It is an incredible record and his dominance is a world record for most wins at a single ironman event.

Chances are, Brown will add number eight next weekend in Taupo. Kieran Doe, Terenzo Bozzone, Stephen Bayliss and even three-time Coast to Coast winner Richard Ussher will fancy their chances but it will take something special to beat Brown.

Sadly, the field in Taupo is not as strong as it once was.

The proliferation of world ironman events - there were six when Brown started and there are now 20 - means the quality of the Taupo field has been diluted to such an extent it is now essentially a race to find New Zealand's best ironman athlete.

And Brown has proven time and again that he is the best at Taupo.

Even when he went into the race after a week of failing to keep any food down, as he did in 2007, he still won. On other occasions he has given rivals huge chunks of time heading into the marathon (12 minutes in 2001, 18 minutes in 2004) and still won.

He is a phenomenal athlete, perhaps in the top five ironman athletes in the world, and it is his running that sets him apart.

He rarely leads during the swim or bike legs but once out on the marathon he's like the greyhound chasing the rabbit. His best marathon time of two hours, 43 minutes means he runs at under four minutes a kilometre.

Ironically, it was his lack of speed which pushed him into ironmans

rather than triathlons. He had aspirations of going to the Sydney Olympics after some success on the World Cup circuit but he was always more suited to endurance events.

Ominously for his rivals, he's in good shape ahead of Taupo and getting faster with age. At 68kg, he is extraordinarily lean and veins in his legs stand out like railway tracks.

The prospect of an eighth win sounds good to Brown and he won't be satisfied there.

"I couldn't imagine doing a New Zealand summer without racing in Taupo," Brown says. "It's part of what I do. I love the race.

"There are times when you hate it because it's nerve-racking and there's more pressure here to win than anywhere else. It's a stressful week. There's always someone who has come to kick you off your perch."

It's why he still puts himself through such a punishing schedule.

CAMERON BROWN

Age: 36

Height: 175cm

Weight: 68kg

Career highlights
* Ironman NZ
Winner 2001-05, 2007-08
* European Ironman
Winner 2006
* Hawaii Ironman
Runner-up 2001, 05; third 2002-03
* Tauranga Half Ironman
Winner 1998-2004, 2007
Did you know?

Brown was knocked off his bike when crossing the Pakuranga Highway as a high school student. "It nearly killed me. I was lucky I was riding a bike because if I had been walking, I would probably be in a wheelchair."

Ironman New Zealand
The race celebrates its 25th birthday next weekend with a record 1495 entrants. There is also a record 842 Kiwis who will tackle the 3.8km swim, 180km bike ride and full 42.2km marathon. Six-time winner Jo Lawn (2003-08) will be favourite in the women's race.