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REDHEAD’S Daniel Collins is eyeing top-10 finishes at the three-round national ironman series this month after surviving a nervous final stage of qualifiers to break a seven-year drought for the region.
Despite failing to make Saturday’s final of the sixth and final round of the Summer of Surf (SOS) at Surfers Paradise, the 20-year-old retained third spot among those chasing five places for the February 24-26 national series at Cronulla.
Collins finished 14th overall with 93 points in the SOS ironman leaderboard, which took into account the best three results from each competitor. The top five SOS ironman not already guaranteed places in the 20-man event at Cronulla secured a start. Collins finished behind Tanyn Lyndon and Hayden White but a point ahead of Wes Berg and two clear of Trevor Hendy jnr in the race.
The SOS effort, which included a seventh and eighth, made Collins the first Hunter ironman since Belmont Swansea’s Josh Blair in 2010 to make the series.
“There was a lot of travelling around, I’ve been to every round,” Collins said. “I did the hard yards and ended up coming out with the result. I’m a Nutri-Grain ironman now, which is pretty surreal and exciting.”
Collins competed in trials and SOS qualifiers for the national ironman series the previous two years but said “this is really my first first go at it. This year I’ve actually sacrificed other races. I just knuckled down and focused on trying to qualify”.
The 2016 Surf Lifesaving NSW athlete of the year was now eyeing a strong showing against the best in the business at Cronulla.
“The goal obviously is just to go as well as you can, but everyone shows up ready to race because it’s the professional side of our sport,” he said. “But if I could get into a couple of top 10s, I think for my first series that would be pretty good. It will be a good learning experience anyway.”
As well as the ironman success, Collins defended his SOS surf race title with victory at Surfers Paradise to win the series by four points.He was also fifth in the run-swim-run series after a ninth on an anxious Saturday for Collins, who missed the ironman final with a 15th in the repechage round late on Friday.
“I just had a bit of bad luck in the last-round repechage and I was just a little bit sick,” he said. “I missed a wave on the board and I was too far back to make it up. I had to sit back and watch how it played out on Saturday.
“I was lucky that two guys who were up in the points just behind me, Trevor Hendy and Mitch Allum, missed out on the final, which gave me a bit of relief, but there was still the possibility that I was going to miss out.”
“I had to sit there and watch them all go around, but it all worked out in the end, which is all I could ask for.”
“It’s been a really busy summer chasing events around. Trying to fit everything in, it’s been pretty hectic, but I think that’s why I love this sport and why I do it.
“It’s always keeping my busy and it’s exciting stuff.”
