The event takes place over a 4K swim (shortened to 1.5km), 120K bike and 30K run course, which promises to be flat and offers the chance for some fast times. Athletes will swim in the bay of Motala on the eastern shore of the beautiful Lake Vattern before cycling through the countryside and back through the centre of Motala on the three-lap course.

There is one challenging climb that should help break the field up before they embark on the three-lap run course on trails and unpaved roads, much of which is along the shore of Lake Vattern. The whole course is spectator friendly and should make for a great atmosphere.

The Great Britain Age-Group Team includes some strong contenders for medals, including David Patten (60-64), who won gold at the 2014 Weihai ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships and Victoria Hill (40-44) who won silver.

“We’ve got quite a strong team,” Dawn Hunter, the Great Britain Age-Group Team manager said, “including some medallists and fourth-placed athletes from Weihai so we’ll be hoping for medals again this time.”

“It will be great to finally get the team there and to see them race. We’ve had quite a few people who have been slightly injured or have come back from injury just in time to do the race and we’ve got quite a lot of people who haven’t raced for GB before so that is quite exciting.”

The elite race is full of action, but Joe Skipper truly is on the verge of being a world star. We’ve followed him since those early days claiming a British National Title at the middle distance, picking him as our ‘one to watch’ for the future and crowning him our triathlete of the year last year. Five weeks ago a career best performance at Ironman Texas meant Joe claimed 2nd in a huge field and took silver at the Ironman North American championships. He is totally ready to go one further and take a world title. Watch this space.

I feel great, I’ve completed probably the best 4 weeks training I have ever done and have broken local time trial course records at 10 miles, 25 miles and recently on Sunday the 50 mile course record by 4 minutes despite being in heavy training.

My running is also going strong and him hitting some of my best times and my swimming is going very well. I feel as though I’m in a lot better shape then what I was in for Texas.

My big rivals will be Ronnie Schildknecht, Filip Osplay, Dirk Bockel, and Martin Jenson. If Ritchie Nichols is in contention after the bike he’s definitely a big threat.

Winning will be absolutely massive to me. It’s a World Championships and it’s very prestigious. I’m using it as preparation for Ironman UK so it would give me a lot of confidence and it would also prove that I’m one of the best long distance triathletes in the world at the moment.