Rev3 Season Kicks Off In Knoxville Sunday

This Sunday, May 5, the Rev3 triathlon season will kick off in Knoxville, Tenn. Pro athletes will be competing in the Olympic-distance race for their share of a $50,000 prize purse, with $7,000 each going to the male and female champions. Age-groupers will be racing on the Olympic-distance course and on a half-iron-distance course.

The race will go through Knoxville’s downtown, starting from Volunteer Landing with a swim in the Tennessee River, a bike from Neyland Stadium (home of the Tennessee Volunteers) onto rolling rural country roads, then a run through the Knoxville Greenway Trail System, with a finish at World’s Fair Park.

Both the men’s and women’s races have a solid lineup of pro triathletes racing, with more than 30 pro men and more than a dozen pro women. On the men’s side, reigning Race to the Toyota Cup champion Cameron Dye highlights the field, as he excels at Olympic-distance non-draft racing, but he’s fresh off a seventh-place finish at last weekend’s St. Anthony’s Triathlon in a strong field, so Rev3 Knoxville will be another test of his early-season fitness. Other top contenders include four-time Xterra off-road world champion and South African Conrad Stoltz, who will give Dye a run for his money on the bike leg. Also, former collegiate swimmer Kyle Leto will likely be at the front out of the water, and former age-group national champ Kaleb VanOrt could easily use his 10K run speed to get on the podium. Other top contenders include Rev3 Half Full champ Eric Limkemann, Andrew Yoder, Brandon Marsh, David Thompson, Xterra specialist Craig Evans and James Hadley.

On the women’s side, the field is highlighted by 2010 Ironman world champ Mirinda Carfrae of Australia, who just finished sixth at St. Anthony’s last weekend. Her top competition will come from London Olympian and Danish athlete Helle Frederiksen, who has proved early-season form by winning Ironman 70.3 San Juan in March (her first ever 70.3) and then the Olympic-distance Nautica South Beach Triathlon in April. Other top athletes include 70.3 specialist Magali Tisseyre of Canada, American and Rev3 Maine champion Lauren Goss, veteran Sam Warriner of New Zealand (who won Rev3’s first season in 2010), Radka Vodickova of the Czech Republic (who will probably be one of the leaders out of the water), and American Jessica Jones Meyers.

Check back to Triathlete.com on Sunday for a race recap and results.

PHOTOS: Rev3 Knoxville

Professional Start List

Men
Brandon Marsh
Eric Limkemann
David Thompson
Dan Feeney
Damian Hill
Craig Evans
Kyle Leto
James Burns
Nick Brodnicki
Alex VanderLinden
Adam Bohac
Conrad Stoltz
Andrew Yoder
Matthew Wisthoff
Kaleb VanOrt
Mark Bowstead
Thomas Maliszewski III
Jack Smith
Tom Wood
Cameron Dye
Ryan Frederickson
Chris Foster
James Hadley
Ryan Bates
Dan McIntosh
Kalen Darling
Ivan Kalashnikov
Caio Ferreira
Brooks Cowan
Andrej Heilig
Kevin Ryan
Jake Rhyner
Artem Parienko
Doug Van Wie

Women
Lauren Goss
Zana Buttermore-Baca
Liz Baugher
Megan Riepma
Helle Frederiksen
Sam Warriner
Mirinda Carfrea
Jessica Jones
Jennifer Spieldenner
Magali Tisseyre
Jullie Patterson
Alice Henriques
Lisa Mueller
Radka Vodičkova

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