IRONMAN 70.3 Mont Tremblant has been cancelled due to the wildfires raging in the Canadian province of Quebec.

Pro athletes arrived in transition on Sunday morning to find ash on their bikes and significant smoke in the air, leading to the race being cancelled ahead of the planned start at 0650 local time (1150 UK, 1250 CET).

Canadian star Tamara Jewett, who would have started favourite for the women’s pro race, spoke about the cancellation on her Instagram account, with a mixture of sadness and resignation.

Tamara Jewett on Mont Tremblant no go

“So a bit of a sad morning, they’ve just cancelled 70.3 Mont Tremblant because of the smoke. You can see how bad it is. And there was ash on our bikes this morning.

“Really unlucky because the air quality was a lot better yesterday. I want to cry both for the forests and for Canada this summer and for this event today. I think it’s good that they’ve made this call, it’s obviously a really hard one for them to make. As you can see, it’s not a little bit of smoke, it’s pretty extreme.

“It would be very hard on the people competing today to go ahead in these conditions right now. So a bit of an anticlimactic morning, scrambling around with some issues in transition, getting everything all set up just to have the race cancelled, which sucks.”