Anyone who still had doubts about Sam Laidlow can throw all doubts overboard: after a magnificent battle with Kyle Smith that lasted until the last meters, the Frenchman has just recorded a stunning victory at the PTO T100. Laidlow was chased for eighteen kilometers, but did not bow his head and claimed a well-deserved victory.
During the swim, despite the fast pace of leader Aaron Royle, few real differences were made. At least at the front of the race, because while most of the favorites all came out of the water pretty close together after 23 minutes, Clément Mignon and Sam Laidlow did lose over a minute and Sam Long even 3:36 minutes. It wasn’t going to be Long’s race anyway, because due to equipment trouble he lost much more time during the bike and therefore he was completely out of chances.
At the front, everything just clumped together on the bike and in the end it was Laidlow who, after impressively and very quickly making up his minute deficit, took over the lead in the race. Thanks to his fast pace, the first differences emerged at the front of the field as well. His lead may not have increased very quickly, but it did, and once in T2, the gap Laidlow had increased to a minute and a half. At that point Rico Bogen, Magnus Ditlev, Kyle Smith and Youri Keulen followed in T2, with Gregory Barnaby, Daniel Baekkegard and Max Neumann again a few seconds behind.
During the run, Laidlow thus started strongly in the lead, but it was especially Smith who impressed with an impressive first half of the half marathon. Halfway through the run, he had made up a minute of his 90-second deficit and could almost touch Laidlow already. Yet it didn’t come to that in the kilometers that followed, because once at thirty seconds behind, the difference kept hovering around that half minute. Even entering the final three kilometers, this meant the race could still go either way. Smith was constantly watching Laidlow’s back on the back-and-forth course, but he wasn’t getting any closer anymore.
With every hundred meters run, it became more exciting: the pain and fatigue could almost be read from Laidlow’s face, while Smith came closer by meter at the final stages. However, even now Laidlow did not give in and eventually managed to run to victory.
Laidlow won the race in a time of 3:13:38, Smith was second in 3:14:03 and Baekkegard was third in 3:16:41.
