Karen Bordage has become the third Bermuda athlete to qualify for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii after a storming performance in Canada over the weekend.

The Bermudian clocked a time of 10 hours, 27 minutes and 57 seconds to finish second in the women's 40-44 age group at the Subaru Ironman in Penticton.

And she will now join Winner's Edge team-mates Karen Smith and Julia Hawley at the most prestigious, and toughest, Ironman event in the world.

"Three of us have qualified, and it's great that we are all training partners. We all cycle for the Winner's Edge team, so to be able to go with team-mates is great, I'm definitely looking forward to it."

Bordage finished Sunday's race just one minute, 13 seconds behind group winner Sue Rubens, and her time saw her finish 152nd overall out of 2,602 competitors, and qualify for the Hawaii event in October.

"I'm absolutely thrilled to have qualified for Hawaii, and I'm really pleased that I could have a good race at Penticton. It's an old, traditional ironman in Canada, a very challenging race, and I'm so pleased that all the hard work paid off," said Bordage.

She began with a strong swim, and her time of one hour, eight minutes 44 seconds, actually put her ahead of Rubens.

"The swim is usually the weakest part of my race, and this time was a big improvement for me, it was about five minutes faster than my last swim. But for me getting in the water with 2,600 other people is quite daunting, and just coping with that volume of people is hard, and it is the hardest part of the race so I was pleased to come through it.

"I was really pleased I had a really good swim and it set me up for the rest of the race, and then I had a great bike and it kicked on from there and then with the run it was just a case of hanging on. I just kept going, I had a great time, and ended up as top amateur women. I'm very happy with it all.

"It was a great day, an incredible experience, and there is Hawaii in just five weeks. It doesn't give you much time to recover, so I'll take it pretty easy from now until the race."