Tugun champ eyeing crown

TUGUN ironman Hugh Dougherty knows his time to take out the Australian Surf Life Saving Championship is now.

In a competition that really is survival of the fittest, the 26-year-old is one of the last big names standing and, of those remaining, certainly the form starter at Kurrawa on Friday.

The only man who has held it over Dougherty this season, Shannon Eckstein, has injured his hip, defending champion Pierce Leonard has withdrawn with a back problem and 2004 champion Zane Holmes is also out.

Dougherty’s main challenge will come from four-time champion and Olympic swimmer Ky Hurst (Kurrawa), but Queensland champion Corey Jones (Metropolitan Caloundra) and NSW champion Ali Day (Warilla-Barrack Point) will also be pushing for a podium finish.

Second behind the brilliant Eckstein in four of five races and the overall pointscore during the Kellog’s Nutrigrain Ironman Series, Dougherty has enjoyed his best season.

He is hoping to carry that form into the Australian championships.

“Realistically, now I think I’m a chance of winning a medal in the ironman at Aussies, and that’s what I’m aiming for,” he said.

“I don’t know if I’d have thought that before the KNG series, but I’m really looking forward to the Aussies now.”

Dougherty has extra responsibilities this week as the coach of the Tugun squad. But that has not hampered him at all this season – it may have even helped.

“This year I’ve been doing less training,” he said.

“Along with the coaching, I’ve been doing my plumbing apprenticeship, and I don’t know, but that might just be the right sort of balance.

“I’ve had previous years where I’ve had a second or a third in the KNG series but also a 10th or 12th and that sort of thing. This year every race I felt really comfortable going into it and finished up there in all five of the rounds.”

The lure of a “perfect” season will be driving Alicia Marriott as she chases the ironwoman title this week.

When she won last month’s KNG Series, Marriott became the first female competitor to win the triple crown of the Australian ironwoman championship, the Coolangatta Gold and the KNG Series.

Now she is trying to go a step better by winning all three in the same surf season.

Bateup (Kurrawa), with 18 Australian championship gold medals in her career, looms as one of Marriott’s leading challengers.

Other threats include Northcliffe trio Kristyl Smith, the defending Australian ironwoman champion, Elizabeth Pluimers, winner of the KNG Series final, and Courtney Hancock, who won her second Queensland ironwoman title last week. Manly’s six-time NSW champion Naomi Flood, who won the Australian ironwoman title the last time it was held at Kurrawa in 2006, will also be hard to beat.