With 2006 champion Sam McGlone sidelined by Achilles tendinitis and 2-time Ironman winner Chrissie Wellington resting on her laurels, can anyone beat defending champion Mirinda Carfrae?

As Crowie, the new King of Kona, takes a rest, and defending champ Andy Potts is presumably still recovering from his Kona debut, the men’s field at the 70.3 World Championships is wide open.

Joanna Zeiger has won races ranging from the Olympic distance to the Ironman, but really seems to have found her calling at the 70.3 distance. She is one of the favorites going into the 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater.

Samantha McGlone’s coach and fiance emerges from losing his job at USAT to the hottest coach in the business in a momentous six months.

Cooler temperatures suit American Matt Reed and Great Britain’s Jodie Swallow in second Escape to Bermuda triathlon, which mirrors Alcatraz with a jump off the ferry start.

Canadian Tom Evans’ 8:07:59 is the fastest ever men’s 40-plus Ironman time, while Scotswoman Bella Comerford celebrates her birthday with a smashing win just three weeks after finishing 7th at Ironman Hawaii.

Hillary Biscay made a bit of news last week with her blog comments. She broke the story, unintentionally, that she, Chrissie Wellington, and Belinda Granger are leaving Team TBB. We asked her to amplify on her comments.

2008 has been a coming out party of sorts for 26 year-old Australian, Joe Gambles. Slowtwitch sat down with Gambles to see if he has what it takes to climb onto the podium at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater next weekend.

With her second place finish at the Ironman World championships in Kona, Yvonne Van Vlerken showed that her record breaking performance at Quelle Challenge in Roth wasn’t a fluke. The “flying blonde Dutch girl” is the newest ST contributor.

Benjamin Sanson is one of the most respected swimmers in the Professional triathlon world, but the enigmatic French triathlete is also know to have a great fondness for fine wine, parties and women.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Wolfgang Dittrich made his living as the ferocious rabbit Mark Allen and Dave Scott were forced to chase down in the marathon portion of Ironman Hawaii each year. Slowtwitch sat down with Wolfgang at a Boulder bagel shop.

The Slowtwitch forum and the triathlon world as a whole was occupied on Friday with the news that Chrissie Wellington, Belinda Granger and Hillary Biscay were leaving team TBB and coach Brett Sutton. We dug a bit deeper.

Ruben Ruzafa (ESP) stunned experts and onlookers alike as he came from nowhere to win the 2008 XTERRA World Championships in Maui, Hawaii. Julie Dibens (GBR) looked very strong as she repeated her title from 2007.

Samantha Warriner wins Huatulco World Cup and takes World Cup series title, Sarah Groff takes second, finishes 4th and top American in World Cup series, Jarrod Shoemaker takes silver in brutal heat on rugged bike

Clemens Coenen from Germany was the top age grouper at the 2008 Ford Ironman World Championships in Kona with a fantastic performance. But he impressed many folks even more by slowing down at the end to let the female overall champion Chrissie Wellington enjoy the lime light.

Ramon Serrano sent us a nice selection of images from the 2007 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, FL to get us all pumped for the upcoming 2008 event.

Neo Pro Mark Van Akkeren currently resides in Boulder, CO among many of the triathlon elite. He is an amazingly fast cyclist, an even faster swimmer and quite possibly the fastest talking man in triathlon. Word now has it that he is bringing his running up to speed.

It is tough to do a race in Tennessee or Alabama which isn’t either organized by Team Magic or touched in another way by them. We wanted to know more about Team Magic and had a few words with Faye Yates, one of the owners.

With the 2008 XTERRA World Championships in Maui now just a few days away, here is a gallery of images of the 2008 US XTERRA Championships in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

All images © Nils Nilsen/XTERRA

These photos are all taken by Timothy Carlson, at Kona, during the afternoon at the Hawaiian Ironman. Click on any image. Its companion piece is
Morning. – The Editor

I’ve chosen photos representative of Tim Carlson’s day at the 2008 Hawaiian Ironman. These photos give a nice visual narrative, I think, of the event as it was contested at the front of the race.

I’ve entitled it Morning and I think all these photos were taken before noon, Kona time. Click on any image. Afternoon follows as a separate piece. – The Editor

For a guy who says he does not enjoy the physical toll of running, United States Navy SEAL David Goggins sure does a good job of fooling those of us watching from the sidelines.

Chrissie Wellington and Sandra Wallenhorst ran sub 3 hours at the 2008 Ford Ironman World Championships and finished 1st and 3rd respectively. We looked closer at the shoes which carried them and the other top 10 female finishers through the marathon.

While we started to look closer at the bikes of the top finishers at Ironman Hawaii last year already, this year we also wanted to know more about their running shoes.