London just hosted the first World Championship E-Tri: a world indoor triathlon championship. Despite many big names not being at the start, the win – and thus the world title – went to a strong racing Chase McQueen.
In the finals, three heats were completed: in the first heat there was swimming (200 meters), biking (4 kilometers) and running (1 kilometer), only to reverse that order in the second heat and thus first run, then bike and finish with swimming. In the third and decisive heat, all athletes then started based on the time differences from the first heats, but returned to the usual order of swimming, biking and running.
Heat 1: Chase McQueen seemingly easy to win
In the first heat, it was Max Stapley and Chase McQueen who together took the initiative during the swim and also climbed out of the water first. Still, the differences were logically small, as all men came out of the water within thirteen seconds of each other, and then immediately got on the bike. There, high wattages were pushed and that soon made for bigger differences.
McQueen came off the bike first, followed by Samuel Dickinson at three seconds and then Stapley followed in third position at eight seconds. What followed was a thousand meters on the treadmill and even there McQueen didn’t crack: he secured the first heat win and thus already gained important time advantage for the decisive third heat.
Heat 2: McQueen in pursuit, eventually winning
In the second heat, which started with a run, Hugo Milner was the first to get off the treadmill. He was followed at one second by Maxime Heuber-Moosbrugger and then followed by, all within ten seconds, Stapley, James Edgar, McQueen and Dickinson, among others.
On the bike, Hueber-Moosbrugger went off on his own, but McQueen made amends by closing his gap and joining him. When they entered the pool together, they had a handful of seconds ahead of the first men behind them. Incidentally, McQueen’s transition was by far the fastest, giving him a lead over Hueber-Moosbrugger even before he was in the water.
During the two-hundred-meter swim, McQueen’s lead increased a bit more and again McQueen won the heat.
Heat 3: Chase McQueen finishes it off, takes world title
At the start of the third heat all excitement was gone already; based on the first two heats McQueen was allowed to start more than ten seconds earlier than his next competitors Stapley and Dickinson, and was never in danger again during the swim, bike and run. In fact, his lead only increased and he won the world title by a landslide. Stapley finished second at nine seconds and Hueber-Moosbrugger third at thirteen seconds.
