COX PLATE DAY MONEY BACK

The secret to Brown’s surf title defence

IT was the missing ingredient that propelled her to a maiden Nutri-Grain ironwoman series win and Harriet Brown says belief will fuel her title defence this summer.

Brown starts that mission at Queenscliff Beach in Sydney tomorrow when she toes the line in the opening round of the Nutri-Grain series, part of the new Ocean6 competition.

While Brown topped the ladder in last summer’s three-day series at North Cronulla, she is still searching for a maiden Nutri-Grain race win.

But the new-found belief, that has helped the Northcliffe champion win almost every ocean event around – from world titles and series championships to the famed Molokai to Oahu paddleboard race – has Brown believing she can break her duck this season.

“I think that was a big difference for me last year was becoming more of a confident racer and actually believing that I could win,” Brown said.

“I think there were times in the past where I’ve been leading and thought, ‘what’s going on here’, or haven’t kept pushing that lead.

“I’ve changed my mentality. I think it’s more mindset than anything to do with a massive change in training load.”

Brown’s quest may be to cross the line first but her main goal this season is to keep her crown.

“The main goal is to defend the series, absolutely,” Brown said.

“It was the best feeling when I won last year. It’s been a childhood dream and I’d been in the series for eight years and to finally achieve that was incredible.

“I’ll certainly be chasing that feeling again.

“I am realistic, I do know that the other girls are incredible and when there’s surf and different things going on, it’s definitely not easy and there’s lots of things out of your control. But my goal is to do my best and do some races that I’m really proud of.”

While the Nutri-Grain series now sits within the new Ocean6 competition rather than being a standalone elite competition, Brown and the fellow competitors in the top six from last year’s series will automatically qualify for tomorrow’s finals.

That will allow Brown to compete in other events in the Ocean6 series where she is also automatically qualified for the board and swim finals and is likely to jump into more action in today’s qualifiers.

The Ocean6 series starts at Queenscliff today with action in the swim, board, ski, ironman and ironwoman, taplin and beach flags preliminaries. “I’m excited. Any opportunity we have to race is a good opportunity and I hope it helps to build the sport,” Brown said.

“It is a shame that it’s not the series as it used to be but there’s some awesome people that do our sport and hopefully this event can build.”