Two-time Ironman World Champion Joins Pro Line-Up at Laguna Phuket

Craig Alexander, the world’s most successful Ironman and Ironman 70.3 athlete of recent years, will contest the Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship at Laguna Phuket on 5 December – the latest addition to a stellar line-up of elite professional triathletes heading to the island.

The 2008 and 2009 Ironman World Champion is set to face-off against fellow Ironman 70.3 world champion Michael Raelert of Germany and a host of top pros, including five-time Ironman champion Luke McKenzie of Australia, Italian Massimo Cigana, Tim O’Donnell of the USA and Paul Amey of Great Britain.

One of the most respected triathletes amongst his peers and a favourite of fans worldwide, Alexander – known to many as “Crowie” – has proven himself the most versatile swimmer, runner and biker across all distances of triathlon.

His back-to-back victories in the gruelling Hawaiian Ironman put him in the elite company of only three other triathletes who have won the Ironman World Championship two years in a row.

Winner of the Laguna Phuket Triathlon (LPT) in 2002 and 2004, Alexander is relishing a return to the island to compete for a slice of the US$75,000 Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship prize purse.

“I am really looking forward to returning to Phuket, after a few years away to race the inaugural Ironman 70.3 Asia Pacific Championship,” he said. “This will certainly be a unique race in an amazing country.”

The Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship will be contested at Laguna Phuket just a week after the 17th LPT on 28 November, as part of a unique endurance extravaganza that will see some 800 individuals and teams compete in each event amid a 10-day carnival of triathlon training and social activities staged around the deluxe destination resort.

Laguna Phuket’s Ironman 70.3 course – described as: “a turbocharged LPT” - has a 1.9km swim in the sea and across a freshwater lagoon; an extended 90km bike ride on the steep coastal hills of northern Phuket; and a 21.1km run around the lush Laguna resort.

And as a curtain-raiser to the endurance extravaganza, recently-crowned Ironman world champion Mirinda Carfrae is set to host a triathlon training camp in Phuket this weekend (5-8 November).

Carfrae, who said after her Ironman World Champion victory: “My favourite place to race, aside from here in Hawaii, would have to be Phuket,” will incorporate sessions on the new Ironman 70.3 course in her Phuket training camp schedule.

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