World champion adventure racer Richard Ussher (32), formerly of Queenstown, will compete in Challenge Wanaka's tough long-distance triathlon race on January 17 next year.
He will provide home-grown competition for the defending champion, German hard man Marc Pschebizin (34).
In March, Ussher completed the Taupo Ironman, his first race of that discipline, in seventh place (8hr 47min), 23min behind seven-time winner Cameron Brown.
A month earlier, he won the Coast to Coast longest day event for the third time.
His previous victories were in 2005 and 2006.
In May, Ussher ran away with the 38km Routeburn Classic title for the fourth year in a row.
Pschebizin (34) won the hard-fought Challenge Wanaka in January from Australian Chris McDonald in a course record time of 8hr 47min 49sec.
In February's Coast to Coast, Pschebizin was in the leading group of six but eventually finished in 15th place.
As with Ussher, Pschebizin likes the hills.
He is the seven-time winner of the world's most difficult high altitude ironman event, Switzerland's Inferno Triathlon, which includes a 30km mountain-bike section and climbs 5000m.
From what Ussher saw of him in the Coast to Coast, he knows he has a battle on his hands.
"In biking, we were both in the break-away group. Marc dropped behind a little in the run but lost most of his time in the kayak."
Ussher moved from Queenstown to Nelson about two-and-a-half years ago, where he lives with his partner Elina Maki-Rautila, who is also an adventure racer.
He has amassed an impressive resume of multisport achievements in the last decade and competed at the Winter Olympics as a moguls skier in 1998.
Ussher is excited about leaping into triathlon's large pool of competitors and getting more race experience.
There are few elite multisport athletes, though plenty of "weekend warriors", and Ussher had felt he had been time-trialling against himself in many of his races.
"It is quite a different beast to the things I've done before but it is still a challenge.
"I haven't completely switched over. I am still doing adventure racing and multisport but I am not worried about trying to win the Coast to Coast 10 times or emulate Steve Gurney. I am continually trying to challenge myself.
"To be honest, I've got to the stage with multisport where it is still a great thing to do but there is not a huge amount of challenge unless one or two of the other top guys are there.
"That only happens about once or twice a year . . . For me, when I was in Taupo, the thing that was so cool was there was 15 guys within 15 minutes of each other.
Ussher aims to finish at the "sharp end" at Challenge Wanaka and looks forward to mixing it with Pschebizin and McDonald - whom he raced at Taupo - again.
Swimming has not been his forte but he is aiming for a 50- minute swim leg at Challenge Wanaka.
His goal is to finish the 3.8km swim without trashing himself and start the 180km bike leg comfortably.
His first big test in swimming will be on the Gold Coast, Australia on Sunday, when he competes in the first race of the Anaconda series of swimming, surf-ski, mountain bike and running races.
He is unlikely to be training in Wanaka until a week before Challenge Wanaka, because of other racing commitments, but coming back to Wanaka would be special, he said.
