She didn’t really know what to expect beforehand, but India Lee was once again supreme at The Championship, winning by a landslide and impressively prolonging her title. In a thrilling race, Lee proved simply inimitable.
For Lee, the day started perfect directly: Caroline Pohle was the fastest out of the water with a time of 24:29, immediately followed by Fenella Langridge, Lee and Rebecca Robisch. Less than two minutes followed Els Visser, who was also counted among the favorites, and thus things immediately looked good for the Dutch athlete who normally loses more time during the swim.
On the bike, at the front it was initially Pohle who solo took the lead in the race, but after about fifty kilometers Lee had come back and not much later she would also take over the lead in the race. In the meantime, Langridge was notable for dropping further and further away, something that incidentally worked to Visser’s advantage. Indeed, behind Lee and Pohle, a group emerged with Visser, Langridge, Madsen, Robisch and also Kivioja.
By T2, however, the gap between these women had grown considerably. Lee was first back, followed by Pohle at 40 seconds. Then the chasing group returned to T2 at 3:10 minutes behind, with a clear mission: to catch up during the run.
It did not come to that, however, as Lee again proved inimitable today and ran to a beautiful victory and thus title prolongation. Early in the run, it was clear that Pohle was not getting any closer, but rather losing time, and the other women would not make it too difficult for Lee either.
By contrast, the battle for the remaining podium spots was a particularly exciting one, with Pohle and Madsen getting into a nice battle. Meanwhile, Kivioja and Visser stayed together in positions four and five for most of the race, although after about fifteen kilometers they were visited by Anna Bergsten, who ran strongly to the front.
That Bergsten also immediately took off again in the hunt for possibly another podium spot, but so it was Lee anyway who won the race in a time of 3:56:45, a race record. Madsen was second in 3:59:52 and Bergsten indeed managed to overtake Pohle as well and thus finished third in 4:00:32.
