Sam McGlone out of Kona

Apologies if this was posted somewhere else...

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Sept. 24, 2008 -- One of the favorites to win the Ford Ironman World Championship on October 11, Canada’s Samantha McGlone, who was last year’s runner-up in Kona, announced Wednesday that she will not start the race due to an Achilles tendon injury. The former Ironman 70.3 world champion has had a stellar 2008 season, with wins at Wildflower, Ironman 70.3 Hawaii and Ironman 70.3 Kansas—and was considered to be among the few women capable of defeating defending champion Chrissie Wellington of Great Britain.

“I’ve had problems with the Achilles on and off for the past 18 months,” McGlone said today. “But I was able to manage it and race on it, and it seemed to be getting better in the spring, but it came back when I upped my mileage this summer and just became insurmountable. I couldn’t do any running at all. I tried all kinds of rehab and it hasn’t healed enough to do a marathon on it, so I’m going to have to miss Kona this year.”

Asked when and how she made the final decision to pull out of the world championship, McGlone, a 2004 Olympian, replied, “I don’t know if I ever really made the decision. It decided for me. It was pretty clear. When the race is three weeks out and you can’t run for 20 minutes, it’s pretty obvious what you have to do.”

Needless to say, like past pre-race favorites, such as Luc Van Lierde, who had to cancel his Kona plans at the last minute in 2000, McGlone is very disappointed to be missing the race. “I am pretty devastated,” she said. “It’s tough. Things were going really good in July, so I thought I had kicked it for good, but then it came back worse than ever.”

McGlone, 29, still plans to travel to Kona to participate in pre-race events, fulfill sponsorship obligations and study the race that she has only experienced once. “It will be good for me to watch and learn,” she said. “I’ll get something out of it.”

It’s too early, says McGlone, to speculate about how the injury will affect her racing plans for the remainder of this year and 2009. “For now I’m just going to play it by ear,” she said. “My priority right now is to get this thing healed, and I’m not going to race until it has gotten better. I have no doubt this injury will heal. It just needs a rest.”