Professional cyclist Cam Wurf is widely regarded as one of the most versatile endurance athletes on the planet and the excitable personality that he brings to sport has been a welcome addition to long-course triathlon in recent years.
Since turning his hand to long-distance triathlon, which started with an age-group win at IRONMAN Canada in 2015, the 39-year-old has risen through the ranks, finishing a career-high fifth at the IRONMAN World Championship in 2019.
Now cycling for Team Ineos and ranked PTO World #40 in triathlon, Wurf is still chasing the dream. In a recent interview on the Rich Roll podcast, the Australian shared his thoughts on the level of professional racing, how it rose in Kona last year and why he has always intended to make races exciting.
“Nobody has ever done what these guys are doing”
After finishing 11th at the IRONMAN World Championship last year in 8:00:50, as the first man not to break eight hours, Wurf reflected on how the standard in the sport has risen and the reasons behind it.
“Coming into the race, I was a little on the back foot, but I expected everyone to blow up on the run and to finish like I did in 2019 in fifth. I remember then, Alistair [Brownlee] and Lionel [Sanders] blew past and then walked and I then trudged by and ended up in fifth, but this time nobody blew up.
“To me, and you had to watch the women as well, it seems like everyone in the race had learned to deal with the heat. These guys, through science and just from the age we are at in sport, had heat acclimatisation absolutely dialled.”
Wurf added that he was not surprised that the winner, Norway’s Gustav Iden, ended up smashing the course record in Kona last October either, as he believes that the advancements in science, combined with a course that is given a little more credit than is due, made the perfect combination for a record breaking day.
“Kona, really, is not that hard, it’s not a hard course, especially if you have the right conditioning for it. It’s just a pretty fast course now, as it should be and if there’s no wind, you’re going to see some of the fastest times ever in history.”
Leading the charge
On the topic of trailblazing performances, Wurf highlighted how often when someone makes a breakthrough in sport, all of a sudden, a number of similar performances follow. Using his 7:46 clocking at IRONMAN Italy in 2019 as an example, Wurf pointed out that once something has been achieved, it often becomes the norm, not the outlier.
“When I went 7:45 in Italy, all of a sudden a lot of guys went that speed, and I love that, I love that a bunch of guys looked at me and said I can do that. With Ironman, when I went 7:45, it seems like it’s a marker that now a bunch of guys can do now. It used to be 8:00 hours and now it’s down to that.
“I feel like the kind of guy that a lot of people think that they can be better than, and I’m okay with that, because often they’re right! I wish I could be the best guy, but it’s nice to do it in a way that in a sense makes the sport better.”
Delving into more depth on what he hopes his impact on the sport has been, Wurf revealed that he feels his bike prowess forced the top-level competitions to become races, in a way that he says has made the sport more exciting.
“My whole thing coming into the sport, was thinking that I want to turn this into a race and make it exciting. That’s why when I’m up there, I’m always racing because I’m either behind trying to catch them or up front trying to open up a gap.
“You can be smart and have a pretty good success rate as far as results go by playing the game but it’s a sport and you’ve got to compete, and I prefer to make it a race. To be competitive in this sport you’ve got to find a way to do it differently, because nobody has ever done what these guys are doing right now.”
Wurf is now gearing up to compete at the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, after a strenuous qualifying period that saw him race in South Africa and Lanzarote before finally punching his ticket at IRONMAN Austria. The Aussie will hope the challenging bike course on the French Riviera can play to his advantage come September.
