In San Francisco Taylor Knibb already won with big dominance by taking off on the bike and today was no different at the PTO T100 Ibiza race: already in the first kilometers of the bike leg, the American athlete rode away from her competitors and after that nobody saw her again.
At first it was her compatriot Taylor Spivey who led the swim and was the first to go to her bike after 26:49 minutes, but she was immediately followed by Flora Duffy, Sara Perez Sala, India Lee and also Knibb. After that, a gap of over a minute had already opened up until the next women entered T1, while Anne Haug, Kat Matthews and Paula Findlay, who were considered favorites beforehand, conceded even more than a minute and a half.
On the bike, the five leaders stayed together for a while, but Knibb quickly made a move that proved decisive. Within ten kilometers her lead was already half a minute on the first chaser, India Lee, and more than a minute on the rest. During the eighty kilometers of cycling, Knibb’s lead only increased and by T2 Lee was already 3:14 minutes behind. Following were Imogen Simmonds (+5:21), Lucy Byram (+5:28), Findlay (+5:52), Julie Derron (+5:54), Perez Sala (+7:14) and Emma Pallant-Browne (+7:27), among others. Ashleigh Gentle and Anne Haug, on paper two of the strongest runners, were ninth and 10th but trailing by more than nine minutes.
During the run, Knibb stayed well out of sight of her rivals, although it was Derron who ran much faster and very quickly climbed to second position. From there she quickly began to gain time on Knibb, sometimes even more than fifteen seconds per kilometer, but the gap was actually already too big to have any claim to victory.
Knibb won the race in 3:30:03, Derron finished second in 3:31:46 and Lee finished third in 3:35:17.
