It's potentially not a great year for any athletes planning to race Ironman Florida (given the amount of oil still in Gulf waters) and now that bad luck has also struck athletes getting ready to race Ironman Arizona.
Earlier this week the dam that keeps the water in Tempe Town Lake in Arizona outside of Phoenix burst open quickly draining the home lake to the IMAZ swim.
According to the AP:
"A rubberized dam at the end of a man-made lake near Phoenix collapsed Tuesday night, sending thousands of gallons of water gushing downstream into the normally dry Salt River bed.
The 16-foot-high section of the dam on Tempe Town Lake sent waves at water at an estimated 40,000 cfs pouring forth."
At a recent press conference (see below) officials from Tempe said that they plan to have the dam repaired and the lake refilled by November 1 in time for Ironman Arizona.
However many amatuer athletes who are training for the race remain worried that they won't get the repairs don in time.
A recent comment posted on slowtwitch.com summarizes those concerns:
"I don't think its going to happen, if any of you work in government, you know they never meet deadlines. Top it off with a construction contract, and that makes it even worse. If WTC mentions duathlon as a worse case scenario (as opposed to canceling all together) that will make it even worse. May as well start training for a du."
Time will certainly tell if both IMFL and IMAZ will be full triathlons this year or just duathlons.
