Miller defeats demons
EVERY demon that visited Georgia Miller in the aftermath of her Coolangatta Gold meltdown last year was in her head again.
About halfway through the final 7.1km run, Miller had what she described as a “panic attack” and was about to pull out of the race before pushing through to claim “definitely the biggest win of my career”.
“I’m so lucky that one of my handlers was there to calm me down because I was really close to pulling out,” Miller said. “My breathing got all funny and I started to tear up and I thought that was going to be it for me. But he got me to calm down and keep pushing through.”
Miller eventually crossed the line in 4hrs 29min 22sec, beating Northcliffe clubmate Danielle McKenzie by just under 10 minutes, with Noosa’s Lana Rogers third.
Tasmanian Allie Britton was forced to withdraw after the swim leg suffering a plantar fasciitis injury.
The 22-year-old staggered across the line and was eventually carried to the medical tent by her boyfriend, Australian kayaker Riley Fitzsimmons, where she received attention for about half an hour.
Her victory may have come at a cost of immense physical pain, but Miller knows the mental barriers she broke through to become just the sixth woman to notch her name on the Gold trophy will be invaluable.
“I literally felt like I had strings attached to my arms and I was just pulling my legs up,” Miller said.
“My eyes were going funny, I was getting shivers — it was exactly what happened last year. I just was praying that it wouldn’t get to that stage where I couldn’t go on.”
Miller finished fourth in the Gold last year, blowing up in the run after racing neck-andneck with eventual winner Courtney Hancock until the final run, where she was passed by two other athletes, missing a podium placing.
Meanwhile, Surfers Paradise ironman Ali Day is the undisputed king of the Coolangatta Gold men’s race after claiming a record-breaking sixth title by a record margin.
Day romped to victory by almost 21 minutes from New Zealand’s Max Beattie, clocking a time of four hours and one minute. It took him past Caine Eckstein who won five titles between 2005 and 2011.
“I love this event so much,” said Day, whose sequence of six wins is broken only in 2014 when he was unable to compete because of illness and injury. “I had a crack at it in the under-19s and it broke me. Today I was pretty emotional, just tears of joy looking at my dad Ross and my brother and my partner and all my friends that I had there today.”