David Dellow wins Ironman Cairns 2012

David Dellow has scored a major breakthrough win in his triathlon career by taking out the inaurgural Ironman Cairns. He led the race at the start after coming out of the water with Luke Bell and ahead of the rest of the field.

Almost three minutes behind out of T2 was a chase pack led by Chris McCormack with Leon Griffin, Matty White, Cam Brown, Jimmy Johnson with Bryan Rhodes about 2mins ahead of them chasing Bell and Dellow. McCormack was marshalling the troops to get them working together right from the start to make sure that they had the numbers to ride down the front runners.

On the bike Bell and Dellow lead for a large portion of the race with the chase pack getting them in the later stages. McCormack ‘sat up’ on his bike early on in the ride and obviously made the wise decision to preserve himself for the run knowing that he did not have the edurance to get home in a competititve time. He was chatting to the media and riding with age groupers which would have been a huge buzz for them.

Once caught on the bike Dellow and Bell worked with the pack although reports are that Cam Brown was doing a lot of the work at stages and Dellow was struggling on the hills.

Dellow was one of our dark horse picks before the race. He has showen signs of his potential recently with a very good result at Ironman Melbourne and also winning the Noosa Olypic distance title late in 2011.

On to the run and there were five guys setting the early pace. Luke Bell led the group out on to the run with Cam Brown, Matty White, David Dellow and Leon Griffin all there.

It didn’t take long for Luke Bell to lose his run legs and this left the other four to set the pace. It soon was obvious that Dellow, and Brown were going to be the ones to beat with Dellow and Brown eventually pulling away from the rest early on. Initially Brown looked the better of the two runners but by 22kms in to the run Dellow had established a lead that he was never going to lose.

Dellow eventually took the win 7:17 ahead of Brown.

The big charge of the day came from Jimmy Johnson. The Dane who now lives and trains in Lennox Head under Grant Giles and Aeromax Team ran a 2:52 marathon to run himself in to 3rd place ahead of Matty White. Johnson’s bike time was around 10min slower than the guys who came in to T2 in the lead. He then proceeded to tear up the run course to record a fantastic 3rd place.

Leon Griffin had a more satisfying day finishing only 25mins of a very good pace. In Port Macquarie recently Griffin competed in Ironman Australia and was 38mins behind winner Paul Ambrose. Even though Griffin was two places further back in Cairns the depth of the field and smaller gap would have been pleasing. Griffin is now ranked 23rd on the Kona PR list which places him well at this stage for a spot in October.