Britain's Stephen Bayliss, a member of the all-conquering Team TBB, has just won his second Ironman at Sherborne Castle. Going one better than his second place in the 2007 event, the 29 year-old Bayliss from Carshalton, Surrey, added to his already successful season. Earlier this year he secured his first Ironman crown at Ironman South Africa, as well as taking second at Ironman Austria, and fourth at Ironman New Zealand.

Bayliss exited the swim second, on the heels of Scotland's Fraser Cartmell, competing in his first Ironman event. The pair then pulled away from their pursuers, including Spencer Smith, defending champion Scott Neyedli and Andreas di Bernardo (AUT), to spend most of the next 112 miles in close proximity. Bayliss soon used his experience on the run, pulling into the lead ahead of Cartmell, who after a solid first run lap slowed dramatically, soon to call it a day. We're sure he'll be back stronger in the future.

At T2, Smith was around five and a half minutes in arrears, with Neyedli and regular Tri247 contributor Nick Saunders around 8:30 back. Bayliss controlled the race however, and a strong 2:56 marathon (unofficially), gave him a comfortable win. We imagine that second place for defending champion Scott Neyedli will be very pleasing for the Scot - to this point, 2008 has not been a stellar year performance wise, and this would suggest he's back on track. A well judged bike and run, after losing close to six minutes on the swim to Bayliss, gave him a well earned silver.

Behind, crowd favourite Spencer Smith didn't quite have the running legs to maintain a podium place, the final spot being taken by Austrian Andreas Di Bernardo with another sub-three hour marathon. Spencer held onto fourth place (9:13:34). Fifth place went to Nick Saunders in 9:18:25, and we hope to have Nick's report on the event next week.

To make it another family double, Bella Comerford (who is due to marry Stephen later this year), comfortably lived up to her race favourite tag, and backed up her own pre-race confidence by retaining the ladies title. This adds to what has already been an amazing year for Bella. We make that her sixth iron-distance event of the year already, with four wins (South Africa, Lanzarote, UK, Embrun), a second (in a British record time of 8:51:15), at Ironman Austria and fourth at Ironman New Zealand. We suspect both Stephen and Bella will not be packing up for the year just yet either!