Australia’s Mirinda Carfrae won the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii at the weekend, riding the new Felt IA on her way to victory and a new course record.

The reason we mention triathlon on a cycling website is that Carfrae was riding the new Felt IA non-UCI legal time trial/triathlon bike.

When we covered the bike last month we told you, “Felt say that wind tunnel testing shows that their sponsored triathlete Mirinda Carfrae will save more than 12:30mins over the Ironman Hawaii course in typical conditions by switching from her old Felt DA to the new IA. An Ironman bike leg is 112 miles, so she’ll be making an average saving of over a minute for every 10 miles, in theory.”

Carfrae actually covered the bike course 13:58mins quicker than she did last year. She then got off the bike and ran a 2:50:38hrs marathon, beating the run times of all the other women and all but two of the men. Her 8:52:14 total time is a new course record.

What does this prove? Well, it doesn’t prove anything at all. Carfrae was quicker in all three disciplines than she was last year so her training has clearly been going very well, the conditions were different from last year, and there are plenty of other variables to take into account.

The athletic performance is clearly the most important factor in Carfrae’s win, but what’s also certain is that the scale of her improvement on the bike leg will have other manufacturers looking closely at the IA.

[We’re trying to source a pic of Mirinda Carfrae on the Felt IA]