British athletes are set for the ITU Duathlon World Championships on Australia’s south-east coast in Adelaide this weekend. The Great Britain team features 150 athletes including elite juniors and seniors as well as Age-Groupers.

Adelaide’s Elder Park will host athletes who are eager to claim a world title before the 2015 competition season draws to a close.

Saturday (17 October) sees action from Great Britain’s elite athletes; with the junior male race kicking off proceedings at 9am (local time). Ben Dijkstra and Jimmy Kershaw start in a strong junior field including Luke Willian of Australia.

Willian finished sixth in the recent ITU Triathlon World Junior Championships, which was actually staged as a duathlon due to bad weather. He was two places ahead of Dijkstra, who will hope to perform well after a solid season.

Emma Pallant will be the next athlete to feature in a British tri-suit, starting in the elite women’s race at 11:30am. She faces defending champion and 2015 ETU Duathlon European Champion, Sandra Levenez of France.

At 2:45pm, British Duathlon Champion, Mark Buckingham will state his claim for the ITU World title as he goes in the elite men’s race. Buckingham will be joined by Britain’s Phil Wylie, who became ETU European bronze medallist in Alcobendas earlier this year.

76 members of the Great Britain Age-Group Team will take on the course come 8am Sunday morning; 13 of which pre-qualified following their performances in Pontevedra in 2014. Included is reigning M50-54 bronze medallist, Nigel Arlidge who will look to improve on his podium spot 12 months ago. 2014 silver medallist, Sue Walker (W45-49) will be hoping to make the podium again, having stepped up an age-group this year.

Fast forward half an hour and another 69 members of the Great Britain Age-Group Team take on the standard distance race. Included is 2014 British Duathlon Champion, Ben Hindley (MU20) who took ETU European silver earlier this year.

Great Britain Age-Group Team Manager, Jez Cox said: “The team have settled in well and are acclimatizing to ‎the tail end of the Australian winter. The setting for the whole event along the banks of the river Torrens, in front of the famous Adelaide Oval cricket ground, is simply stunning and I can’t wait to see what they can do.

“We now have the business of upholding our nation's reputation as the most successful country in the history of ITU World Duathlon, and thankfully we have quite an infantry of seasoned age-groupers and first-timers to the Great Britain Team ready to do just that. 

“Names to watch out for as returning medalists in the sprint and standard distances should be Fiona Bracegirdle‎ (W20-24), Lee Piercy (M40-44), Elspeth Knott (W65-69) and Carl Avery (M25-29). The team is stacked with former World and European Champions alongside an exciting sprinkling of new talent that the qualifying races have brought to the top.”

Race distances:

Junior and Age-Group Sprint: 5km run, 20m bike, 2.5km run
Elite, U23 and Age-Group Standard: 10km run, 40km bike, 5km run

For full race start lists and further information, please visit here. Follow the action via @WorldTriathlon on twitter and access live timing and updates at triathlon.org/live.