Preview Ironman 70.3 U.K.

Ironman 70.3 U.K. takes place this weekend on Sunday, June 19. Exmoor Park in Wimbleball, England will play host to this event that features 50 slots for the 2011 Ironman World Championship 70.3 held in Lake Las Vegas, Nev. this September.

This 70.3 race was billed by Ironman champion Chris McCormack as the “toughest 70.3 in the world” and continues to sell out year after year. Top names toeing the start line for 2011 will be British triathlete Philip Graves and New Zealander Samantha Warriner. Graves placed first in this event in 2009 and Warriner won Ironman New Zealand this past March and has seven ITU World Cup victories to her name. Warriner will be challenged by British triathletes Tamsin Lewis and Emma-Kate Lidbury who placed second and third, respectively, in this race in 2010. Last year’s winners, Fraser Cartmell and Bella Bayliss, are not on the starting list. In January, Bayliss announced she was expecting, but her husband, Stephen Bayliss, is on the start list for Sunday.

The demanding Ironman 70.3 U.K. course will take athletes on an anticlockwise swim in Wimbleball Lake, a two-lap bike course with 5,905 feet of climbing and a three-lap run course with 1,323 feet of climbing.

Cell phone coverage and Internet access are hard to come by in this remote area, so updates are typically not available during this race.

Professionals on the starting list:

Men:
Stephen Bayliss
Philip Graves
Luke McKenzie
Nick Saunders
Scott Neyedii
Rich Allen
David Kahn
James Hadley
Jerzy Kasemier
Craig Twigg
Daniel Halksworth
Mikel Elgezabal
Oliver Simon
Martin Jensen
Pedro Gomes

Women:
Samantha Warriner
Emma-Kate Lidbury
Simone Benz
Yvette Grice
Emma Ruth Smith
Meike Krebs
Joanna Carritt
Tamsin Lewis
Amanda McKenzie
Lucy Gossage
Eimear Mullan