Ashleigh Gentle won her fourth PTO race today: the Australian athlete decided the race in her favor during the run in London, as she almost always does, and showed for the umpteenth time that she is probably by far the strongest athlete at this distance. It was Switzerland’s Imogen Simmonds who led the race for a while, but against a nearly flying Gentle, she too was simply not up to the task.
During the swim, what everyone had already anticipated happened right away: Lucy Charles-Barclay and Sophie Coldwell took off, and the two compatriots didn’t give anyone a chance to swim with them either. It caused their lead during the 2 kilometers in the water to increase to nearly a minute over Haley Chura, who was third to her bike, and 1:43 minute over women like Imogen Simmonds, Ashleigh Gentle and India Lee. Behind them, the differences widened and a decent group of chasing women emerged in positions 9-18, including Chelsea Sodaro, Kat Matthews, Anne Haug, Tamara Jewett, Emma Pallant-Browne, Lisa Norden, Lucy Byram, Laura Madsen, Amelia Watkinson and Laura Philipp.
Haug would not last long in the pursuit, because while the German athlete crushed the world’s best Long Distance time at Challenge Roth some weeks ago, she was now quickly more than seven minutes behind, which meant that early in the race she had no chance of achieving a strong result. Haley Chura was also unable to stay in third position, while Charles-Barclay and Coldwell actually stayed together in the early stages of the bike leg and ensured that even then no one got any closer.
Halfway through the bike leg, however, the race developed another way already, as by then Coldwell had already had to let go of Charles-Barclay and saw her gap increase to nearly three-quarters of a minute, while Imogen Simmonds, on the other hand, rode very strongly to the front and could almost see Charles-Barclay in the back already. It would be another twenty kilometers or so before Simmonds caught up with Charles-Barclay after sixty kilometers of biking, took a very brief moment to take some rest, but then also passed immediately and thus took over the lead in the race. It was an impressive move and promised spectacle for the 18-kilometer run that would present itself not much later.
When Simmonds put on her running shoes, she did so with a 25-second lead over Charles-Barclay. Both women had a good and thus fast transition and so there were actually no crucial differences made there. Britain’s Lucy Byram started the run third at 1:22 minute behind and Gentle fourth at 1:59 minute. Just under a minute behind Gentle it was Matthews starting the run in fifth position.
Simmonds started the run incredibly strong and looked full of energy, yet eyes were really only on Gentle. The Australian athlete immediately ran to the front and saw her deficit halved within the first few kilometers. Meanwhile, there was bad news for Charles-Barclay, because even though she really wanted to perform well in ‘her’ London, it didn’t come out today and she dropped out of the race after a few kilometers into the run.
After nine kilometers of running, exactly halfway through, the time had come: Gentle hooked up with Simmonds and immediately also placed an acceleration as if it were nothing, to immediately run away and take over the lead solo. Simmonds saw to it, was unable to follow and so from that moment Gentle ran almost unchallenged to victory.
Behind that, a nice battle for the bronze still ensued, with Matthews, Byram and Philipp putting each other through their paces. Matthews turned out to be the strongest.
The race was won by Gentle, who crossed the finish line after 3:36:17. Simmonds (3:39:11) secured herself a second place and Matthews (3:39:29) thus finished third.
