Not once, not twice, but three times in a row Jetze Plat is now Paralympic Champion Triathlon: after victories in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, the Dutchman has just won the PTWC category at the Paris Paralympic Games. As expected, it was done with enormous superiority. Plat has evolved into the epitome of Paralympic Triathlon.
Plat was a high favorite for the race, which was postponed for another day yesterday. Already during the 750-meter swim he took a minute on his biggest competitors Florian Brungraber (second in Tokyo, ed.), Louis Noel and Geert Schipper (fourth in Tokyo, ed.), who at that point still stayed together. The battle for the remaining medals therefore promised to be an exciting one, but the excitement for the gold was actually gone by then.
Halfway through the 20 kilometers of cycling, it only became clearer that Plat was supreme; by then he had also caught up with all the PTWC1 men who started three minutes earlier and thus definitively took the lead in the race. His lead over Schipper, who was second by then, was already over 1:10 minute. To his credit, Schipper was doing an impressive job, as slowly but surely his lead over Brungraber increased slightly and at that point had reached almost ten seconds.
While Plat only continued to increase his lead, the remaining ten kilometers of cycling just got a little trickier for Schipper. Brungraber passed him and managed to grab a significant lead on him as well. Plat entered T2 with a margin of almost 1:40 minute on Brungraber, who in turn had a 42-second lead on Schipper entering the final five kilometers of wheeling.
During the wheeling, Schipper was unable to close the gap to Brungraber and so the podium was basically sealed immediately.
Plat won the race and thus Paralympic gold in 58:16. Brungraber finished second at 1:10 minute behind and Schipper third at 2:04 minute behind. All results – for all categories – can be found here.
Plat aims for even more gold
For Plat, the Paralympics are far from over. Next Wednesday he will defend his Paralympic title in the Time Trial Handbike and a day later he will defend his Paralympic title in the Road Race Handbike. This Sunday, he will also start in the Paralympic Marathon, a discipline in which he has by far the least experience and is competing at Paralympic level for the first time.
