A German party in Poznan, Poland, as Wilhelm Hirsch and Leonie Konczalla just won Ironman 70.3 Poznan there. Both athletes won by a margin of minutes.
In the men’s race, Hirsch immediately came out of the water first; after 23:18 minutes he had a 35-second lead over Polish Tomas Brembor, Germans Jesse Hinrichs and Fabian Reuter and Briton Thomas Davis. Ironman’s timing didn’t exactly cooperate, with many athletes missing at quite a few timing points, but it seems Hirsch stayed in the lead during the bike and started the half marathon with a lead. Initially it looked like Davis would come in second for a long time, but in the closing stages Christoph Mattner passed him. Hirsch won the race in 3:36:17, Mattner was second in 3:40:25 and Davis third in 3:40:43.
Konczalla’s victory is quite impressive, because of the six competitors, she was the last one out of the water. She then had a deficit of more than four minutes to make up and that happened miraculously fast on the bike. Her gap disappeared very fast and already before the end of the bike she had passed all the women and was even leading solo. Back in T2, her lead had already increased to 2:31 minutes, at that point on Elisabetta Curridori. At that point, the Italian was together with Poland’s Agnieszka Jerzyk.
During the run, then, the battle was mainly about the silver and bronze. Konczalla won in 4:05:55 and Curridori eventually proved too strong for Jerzyk. Curridori finished second in 4:10:19 and Jerzyk third in 4:13:42.
