Scout’s Overview
📡 🚨 Weekly Sports Radar: Ironman Cairns

Ironman Cairns is an iconic triathlon event, held annually in Queensland, Australia. It’s known as the race in paradise, and consists of 3 different disciplines:

• 3.8 km swim in the Coral Sea

• 180 km bike ride along Captain Cook Highway

• 42.2 km marathon run through Cairns

This gruelling Ironman attracts elite professionals and amateur athletes from across the world, with this year’s taking place last week.

🏋 Athlete of the week: Matthew Marquardt

What’s crazy is this year’s winner of the Ironman Cairns, Matthew Marquardt, isn’t just a top-tier triathlete. He’s also a medical student and a funded cancer researcher.

Inspired by childhood friends and family affected by cancer, including his grandmother, he uses triathlons to fund and raise awareness. He’s cycled across the U.S., raised funds for Pelotonia and St. Jude’s, features The James Cancer Centre on his kit, and embeds a charity clause in his sponsor contracts. Talk about endurance.

🏟️ Venue of the week: The Iron Giant

Known as "The Iron Giant," Erzberg is a colossal open-pit iron ore mine located in Styria, Austria, and one of the most legendary venues in extreme motorsport. Each year, this active mining site transforms into the brutal battleground for the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo, one of the world’s toughest races.

🧤 Fit Check: IRONMAN ROKA Maverick Pro II Wetsuit

This is the closest sports fit that I’ve ever seen to a superhero uniform. It almost looks like the Black Panther suit. The Maverick Pro II is designed for unlimited shoulder flexibility, centerline buoyancy to enable proper body rotation, and a graduated buoyancy profile for optimal body position. Sometimes we forget the amount of technology used to design sports fits.

From the bench
🗞️ In case you were injured:

• Stephanie Case is an international human rights lawyer. She’s also a seasoned ultrarunner. She’s also a new mother, just 6 months postpartum. She also just won a brutal 100k ultramarathon through the Welsh mountains, while stopping three times along the race to breastfeed her baby daughter. She is athletic greatness.

• Resuming his winning streak after last week’s 5-hour victory, Carlos Alcaraz won the Queen’s Club Title, just a week before Tennis’s most recognised event, Wimbledon.

• We all love a good comeback story: Robert Kubica, former F1 driver, claimed an emotional victory at the 2025 Le Mans, finishing 14 seconds ahead of second place. Over 10 years ago, Robert had to stop F1 because of a car crash that nearly severed his arm.

🎯 In overtime:

• Uzbekistan's Oksana Chusovitina marked her birthday with a silver medal in the vault at the Gymnastics World Challenge Cup. Here’s the catch: She just turned 50. Gymnastics. At 50. Insane.

• NBA player Victor Wembanyama played a game of chess against 100 fans at Fanatics Fest

📊 Analyst’s Corner:

• Global Ironman Participation has exceeded 200,000 athletes registered for events in 2024. That’s more than 4 full NFL stadiums worth of people racing around the globe.

• Ironman participants spend roughly 1h 16m swimming, 6h 25m biking, and 4h 54m running. I feel tired after unloading groceries in one trip from the car.

🏆 Sports Calendar

Here’s a look at the ongoing and upcoming sports events this week: