Austrian Michael Weiss has just won Ironman Maryland: after a great battle with Sam Long, the favorite beforehand, Weiss decided the race in his favor during the run.
Unfortunately the race faced a shortened swim; instead of 3.8 kilometers, only 900 meters were swum due to strong winds and currents. That was to Long’s advantage anyway, who is not known as a strong swimmer and now, once in T1, was only 45 seconds behind. That put him tenth in the race, while Weiss came out of the water in thirteenth position and had a 1:07 minute deficit to make up.
Initially several position changes took place during the bike leg, but in the end it was Weiss and Long who got together and took over the lead in the race. They also stayed together until T2, building a 4:20 minute lead over Canadian Jason Pohl, who returned in third. The men further behind were already more than 17 minutes behind.
So it was Long, Weiss and Pohl who would be competing with each other for the medals, and after Long and Weiss stayed together for about fourteen kilometers, Long began to accelerate slightly and ran away from Weiss. Yet over the next ten kilometers, his lead never grew beyond half a minute, and after 25 kilometers, the gap actually turned into an advantage for Weiss.
While Weiss was running nicely in the last fifteen kilometers, Long actually began to struggle and saw Pohl pass him in the final kilometers as well. Weiss won the race in 6:59:47, Pohl was second in 7:03:37 and Long was third in 7:05:07.
