Ollie Turner: Jersey triathlete’s Ironman finish caps off ‘best year ever’

Ollie Turner says his 13th place at Ironman Western Australia has capped off his “best year ever”, despite battling illness at the event.

The 27-year-old from Jersey finished his first full-length Ironman in 8:09:55.

The result came six weeks after his first-ever podium finish in a half Ironman in China.

The result was even more remarkable given Turner had been hospitalised with a gastric illness in the build-up to the race in Busselton, which is about 136 miles (220km) south of Perth.

“It’s probably like the sickest I’ve been from like an acute perspective, it was so rough,” Turner told BBC Radio Jersey.

“I felt really good for the first three hours and then hour four I started to think ‘OK this is a bit tough and this is a little bit higher than numbers-wise I’d anticipated to be riding at’ and then at about 110km into the 180km bike I fully blew, I got dropped from the group that I was in and I was completely isolated on my own.

“I took an hour to catch myself and get as much food in as possible and then hit the ground running on the marathon and it felt really good for first 10km then slowly just died a death in the final 30km.

“But in these kind of scenarios you just have to kind of turn your head off to all of those negative thoughts you’re going through and just plough on through it. It’s a case of literally just making your mind go completely blank and putting one foot in front of the other.

“I actually ended up putting back a few positions on the run and I think a few of the guys in front had blown up so bad that they actually couldn’t even finish, so I’d gone from just getting myself over the finish line to crossing the finish line and thinking, ’13th, that wasn’t too bad for my first one’. “