A spine-tingling tale
Currie recalls encounter with sea urchin
The grisly pain of spiky sea urchin spines through Braden Currie’s foot didn’t stop the defending champion of Ironman New Zealand in leading the sport’s Holy Grail event in Hawaii last October.
A flat tyre would do the damage instead. But Wanaka multisport athlete Currie plans on racing again at the fabled World Championships through the black lava rock and scorching sun later this year in Kona, Hawaii, and the
30-year-old can build towards that today when he bids to regain the Ironman NZ title in Taupo.
Currie won the Taupo event in
2017 for the first time, beating
12-time winner Cameron Brown to the finishing line, before later competing at Kona during a good Ironman season that included a third-place finish at the Asia Pacific Championships in Cairns and victory in the 70.3 (Half Ironman) race in Santa Cruz, California.
Preparing the body and mind for racing in Ironman has to be near perfect for those elite athletes wanting to win one of the world’s greatest endurance races.
Treading on a sea urchin wedged in some coral was obviously not part of Currie’s plan ahead of competing in Kona for the first time.
‘‘I had a bit of a rough week leading up to the race - two days before I managed to stand on a sea urchin on a chunk of coral. I got a bunch of spines in my foot,’’ Currie said.
His foot went red and swelled up. A doctor helped pluck out most of the sea urchin’s long, sharp spines, but some had to remain in Currie’s foot for the gruelling three-part marathon.
‘‘I was lucky enough to get a
doctor who’d done a lot with Red Bull [who heavily sponsor extreme sports]. He gave me more time than your average doctor and picked out the main chunks of spines,’’ he said.
‘‘As for the rest of them, he talked me through the fact that
you just have to leave them and let them dissolve.’’
So Currie, minus most of the sea urchin’s spines in his foot, took to the water in Kona, jumped on his bike and motored to the front of the field to set the pace.
But disaster struck when a flat tyre, and when he mistakenly thought he’d been slapped with a five-minute penalty, briefly halted his progress.
Currie would finish the race, but back in 31st among the elite males.
This year’s Ironman NZ event is the 20th Taupo has hosted and Currie is the top seed in the men’s field which includes second-seed Brown, who is competing in the race for an astonishing 21st time.
Brown, 45, came second to Currie last year and said yesterday his desire to keep racing in Ironman events hasn’t diminished ahead of chasing his 13th New Zealand title.
There are 11 Kiwis in total among the elite men’s field of 22 while United States athlete Jocelyn McCauley is the top seed in the elite women’s field of 14. McCauley’s biggest challenger is likely to be Great Britain’s Laura Siddall, who was second in 2017.