The Piranhas shared the spoils from the first interclub in Mudgee in November, with the host club also sharing the maximum 30 points from round one.

However, the Orange club will be without Rory Thornhill after the young gun fractured his wrist last week, meaning they'll head into the biggest meet of the year without one of their stars.

Tom Tudor will be one the Piranhas look to to step up to fill the void left by Thornhill's injury, with the youngster keen to get back into competition - especially at the fabled Australia Day meet.It'll be Tudor's fifth time lining up at Bathurst on Australia Day.

"I've been training pretty hard for the past two months, it's great to finally have some racing," he said.

"Australia Day is pretty popular, lot of people travel to come along and there are a lot of supporters and a lot of people competing."

The event's split - a 2.5km run, a 200m swim, 16km cycle, 200m swim and another 2.5km run - is different to the usual swim-bike-run make-up which Tudor said he prefers.

"It's a more tiring way of doing it, because you've got more transitions you've got to get them down but it is more interesting," Tudor said.

The Piranhas will also have to overcome a lack of open water training due to an amber alert remaining in place at Gosling Creek.

While they've hit the pool at the Orange Aquatic Centre over the summer, Tudor admitted it wasn't ideal.

"We haven't done a lot of open water sessions as the water's so low, it's really disgusting water," Tudor said.

"It won't have that much of an impact, but it'd definitely be better to have an open body of water to race in and practice in."

He said Jack Bilton was one competitor who was likely to step up, doing "really well" over summer sessions, but acknowledged Bathurst's Nick North would be a challenger on his home course.

Seniors will begin at 9.30am on Sunday, with joeys and boomers off and racing from 8am.