A beautiful battle unfolded between Marten van Riel and Sam Laidlow: the PTO T100 in Ibiza showed a spectacular and exciting battle and in the end the victory went to Van Riel, who attacked in the last kilometers and thus decided the race in his favor.
The 2 kilometer swim was immediately led by Van Riel, who headed for the bike after 24:46 minutes. The Belgian, just back from the Olympics in Paris, was directly followed by multiple big names, but also saw other big names such as Youri Keulen facing a huge deficit right away. On the bike, a leading group of about ten men initially formed, but thanks to the high pace of Sam Laidlow, the group thinned out to six: in addition to Laidlow, Rico Bogen, Alistair Brownlee, Mika Noodt, Frederic Funk and Van Riel were among them.
Laidlow and Funk pull through, time penalty Brownlee
Laidlow began to set a high pace at the front, but after forty kilometers – halfway through – he gave a clear signal to the other five men in front: “Take over”. After everyone looked at each other for a while and Laidlow simply stopped pedaling, Funk finally took the initiative and picked up the pace. Meanwhile, not much later Brownlee received a one-minute time penalty for drafting and so the Brit lost connection with the leading group.
It remained Funk who pushed on at the front, but with a few kilometers to go Laidlow took back the initiative. Together with Bogen, Van Riel, Funk and Noodt, he eventually came into T2.
Nice battle Van Riel and Laidlow
During the run, after Bogen led for a kilometer, it was soon clear that two men were the strongest: Van Riel and Laidlow. It was the Frenchman who maintained a high pace through the narrow, winding and hilly paths of Ibiza, while Van Riel initially limited sight to following his competitor. In any case, the pace was high and the men behind the two leaders saw their gap increase to a minute or more in the first seven kilometers.
The run remained exciting into the final kilometers, as Van Riel and Laidlow were still running side by side after 15 kilometers. With only three kilometers to go, Van Riel placed a first serious acceleration, right in a descent, and in the process he seriously hurt Laidlow. The Frenchman tried to catch up, but was unable to do so.
Van Riel won the race in 3:11:36, Laidlow was second in 3:12:02 and Noodt third in 3:13:30.
