Courtney Ogden wins MetaMan Bintan Full Distance triathlon and $40,000

West Australian Courtney Ogden has surprised everyone by winning the MetaMan Bintan full distance triathlon in Indonesia.

The MetaMan Bintan triathlon is staged at the Nirawana Gardens Resort where most of the participants and their families stay. This provides a relaxed atmosphere which is hard to beat. This is an amazing resort.

The swim was calm and lake like, the bike course was undulating the whole 90kms (2 loops) with magnificent roads that made for smooth cycling. The run was a six lap course that went through the resort.

Ogden said the night before that he was in as good a shape as he was when he won Ironman Western Australia in 2010. Although talking to him after the win he said that he didn’t really think so but felt he should be saying it.

The race started with the unproven (over this distance) Courtney Atkinson exerting his dominance in the swim and within 100m had already established a significant lead which he kept adding to as the race went on. By the halfway mark of the first of two swim laps Atkinson was already over 100m clear of the field and had a 1:56 lead over the chase pack at the halfway mark on the swim.

In the chase pack were Courtney Ogden, Tim Berkel, David Dellow, Caroline Steffen and Gina Crawford. Dellow was swimming a very conservative race and would normally have been close to or with Atkinson. However a race plan to stick to a heart rate had him staying with the chase pack. Dellow did pull away for a bit in the swim but joined back up with the chase pack fairly quickly.

Matty White and Fredrik Croneborg were the next chasers and came around the halfway mark in the swim 3:30 down on the leader Atkinson.

Atkinson kept putting time in to the rest of the field on the swim eventually finishing the swim over 3:30 ahead of the field. The chase pack of five were 4:00 ahead of White and Croneborg.

On the bike Atkinson continued his push and by the 30km mark was now 5:10 up on the chase pack consisting of David Dellow, Tim Berkel and Courtney Ogden. Over the next 30kms Atkinson’s lead was kept in check by the chasers with White and Croneborg working hard to catch Caroline Steffen. They were 10min down on Atkinson at the 60km mark.

Over the second 90km loop Dellow, Ogden and Berkel clawed back around 1.5min off Atkinson to be approximately 3:30 ahead out of T2. It was on the second lap that Ogden put the hammer down and started to push the pace. Neither Berkel or Dellow could do anything other than hang on and try to to slip away. After sharing the work in the first lap Ogden was far to strong on the bike for the other two. Ogden was talking about his training with Powercranks and the use of extremely short 145mm cranks. He said this helped to extend his hip flexors while using the Powercranks.

In 2009 Ogden had experimented with 115mmm Powercranks at Ironman Australia and paid the price. For some reason the 145mm cranks in training seem to work well for him. They have given him the strength on the bike that allowed him to hurt his competitors

After a slower than normal swim White stayed with Croneborg for the first half of the bike before losing touch at approximately the 90km mark.

On to the run and Atkinson held a solid pace for the first lap with Berkel running the same. It was Ogden who dropped the hammer from the start and ran well over 2min faster than the other two lead guys for the first 7kms. Ogden was looking incredibly relaxed and was smoking the run. After the first lap we came across Atkinson walking back to the race headquarters. He had ‘spent all his bikkies’ out on the first half of the bike and after the first lap of the run was gone. He knew where the race was going for him and made the decision to not wreck his body at this stage of his long course career. He took away a lot from his first full distance triathlon.

The race was fast becoming Ogden’s race and from where we were sitting in very close proximity to the runners it was clear that he was fearing much better in the heat. This may have been related to his acclimatisation training in his storeroom at home. One hour sessions in a heated room on the indoor trainer for a week before halting five days out from the race. Along with addressing injuries that have plagued him since winning IMWA in 2010..