Hannah Wells

Hannah only turned professional in 2017 and admits: “I’m still learning a lot, and I guess that’s why I love it”.

Clearly the New Zealander is a fast learner, having built on promising 2017 and 2018 campaigns to deliver a stellar year in 2019.

The season came complete with a string of victories, including IRONMAN 70.3 successes at Sunshine Coast, Western Sydney and Taupo as well as Challenge Wanaka. Just for good measure she also took first place in her favourite race, the Tauranga Half Ironman.

The 2020 campaign also started with huge promise as Hannah claimed another victory in Tauranga, second at Challenge Wanaka and then a win at Geelong. Then though came COVID-19, and lockdown.

Wells was something of a late entrant to triathlon, taking up the sport in her early 20s when she was injured playing volleyball and netball and decided to take up swimming.

But clearly she is phased by very little and took to it quickly, though the thing she remains most proud of is “finishing my PhD in under three years while also training for triathlon and multisport”.

Hannah’s least favourite of the tri disciplines is the swim as she finds it the hardest area in which to improve her performance. Meanwhile she says she is driven simply “to be the best I can be”.

Away from triathlon Wells is a sports nut and loves watching golf whilst on the trainer. The only thing that scares her even a little is spiders, perhaps that’s why Batman was her hero growing up, and not Spiderman...

‘High Bun’, as she is also known, doesn’t have a specific favourite holiday location - “anywhere warm with nice places to swim” will do just fine. And when she isn’t training her favourite cheat meal is fries with extra salt.

The best advice Hannah has been given is “train slow most of the time”. Clearly she leaves that mantra behind when she reaches the start line...