The American Taylor Knibb took the win at the PTO US Open by a large margin. In her home country, she took the lead early on during the bike ride and she never relinquished it until the finish line. For Knibb it is the first PTO victory of her career.
It was American Lauren Brandon who led the swim; she gained a lead of almost 30 seconds over Taylor Knibb and Rebecca Clarke, who came out of the water in second and third place. Also following within a minute were Haley Chura (+0:43) and Holly Lawrence (+0:57), while women such as Ashleigh Gentle, Ellie Saltouse, Paula Findlay, India Lee and Lucy Byram followed at a bigger deficit, but still came out of the water within two minutes of Brandon.
On the bike, we really only saw one woman dominate the race: Taylor Knibb. She rode almost directly to the lead and even though Findlay, Salthouse and Gentle in particular pushed it as hard as they could in a chasing group to try to catch up with Knibb, they did not succeed. Also notable was the strong cycling performance of Byram – eventually finishing fourth – who kept moving up to the front, racing herself into a very strong position. In fact, it was Byram who returned second in T2, nearly a minute and a half behind the unleashed Knibb. Findlay followed at 1:35 minute and Gentle at 2:48 minute.
During the run, Knibb did exactly what she needed to do; she remained calm and managed to keep her lead well above a minute at all times. This allowed her to run to a beautiful and well-deserved victory. In the closing stages her lead over Gentle, who was running extremely well and took second place, had dropped to under a minute, but that made no difference to the final result. Knibb won the race in 3:32:58, while Gentle took second in 3:33:49. Findlay was third in 3:37:43.
