Australian Three Peaks Race™

The Australian Three Peaks Race™ was a non-stop offshore short-handed sailing and endurance mountain running event, commencing at Beauty Point just north of Launceston in Tasmania situated on the Tamar River and finishing in Hobart on the River Derwent. En-route, the running members of each team had to scale Mt Strzelecki, Mt Freycinet and Mt Wellington.

The concept came from the British race, the Three Peaks Yacht Race that takes teams from Barmouth in Wales to Fort William in Scotland, along the way climbing the highest mountains in Wales, England and Scotland.

For competitors it offered an interesting alternative for the yachting fraternity and a challenging new activity for runners, climbers and bush-walkers. It was this unique combination of the two disparate disciplines which provided for such a challenging event. The course covered 334 nautical miles of short-handed sailing and 133 kilometres of endurance running over three mountains.

The east-coast course around Tasmania afforded the best combinations of suitable mountains, coastal centres, accessibility for followers, media crews and the public. It brought significant publicity and exposure to two of the more beautiful National Parks but remote areas of the State, Flinders Island and the Freycinet Peninsula, and took competitors, supporting groups and the media the length of the beautiful east coast.

The race was conducted for 25 years starting on Good Friday each Easter from 1989 until the last race in 2013. It attracted competitors from many countries, particularly Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States but other countries were represented too. There was also a core of dedicated local competitors who turned out each year, often just to "have a go" knowing that they possibly had little chance to win but wanted to experience the many challenges to successfully reach the finish line. Likewise there was a dedicated group of volunteers who each year manned various race controls for long hours maintaining a safety net over the competitors for the three to four day event.

Results for the 25 years can be viewed here and Race Records here. There are many notable statistics from the 25 annual races, the quickest, slowest, oldest and so on.

We thank all who had connections with the Australian Three Peaks Race, competitors, volunteers, the interested general public, municipal councils, corporate supporters and everyone who have helped make the race such a success for its 25 years.

Organising authority for the race is the registered association, Australian Three Peaks Race Inc.

Further information can be obtained be emailing .