In a particularly quiet weekend of racing, Brazilian Fernando Toldi and Australian Regan Hollioake just won Ironman Malaysia. In the men’s race, the battle was exciting for a long time, while the women’s race was decided by an almost rare lead.
This was certainly not the case in the men’s race, where the battle for victory was open for a long time. That was mainly between Toldi and Tim van Berkel, but after the swim and bike, other athletes were also in the mix. Josh Amberger, for example, recorded the fastest swim time (47:55) and was then briefly followed by quite a large group and the top ten, which included Toldi, came out of the water within a minute of each other.
As is often the case, the leading group thinned out considerably during the bike ride and in the end only Toldi, Van Berkel, Filipe Azevedo and Josh Amberger remained togehet; the four of them rode minutes away from the other men and until the end of the 180 kilometers they actually stayed together. Then, during the run, it quickly became apparent that Toldi and Van Berkel, who remained side-by-side for a long time, were the strongest runners and would battle for the win.
For about 21 kilometers, the two leaders continued to battle side by side, but from that point on, Toldi began to run away from Van Berkel. Initially, his lead grew slowly, but by the 30-kilometer mark, Toldi’s lead over Van Berkel had grown to nearly two minutes and the race was already decided. Toldi won the race in 8:10:24, Van Berkel was second in 8:12:39 and a Andreas Dreitz finished third in 8:18:08.
In the women’s race, Hollioake provided a one-woman show and little excitement: after the swim (51:59) she was already more than two minutes ahead of Lottie Lucas and nearly 4:30 minutes ahead of Magda Nieuwoudt, her first two pursuers at that point, but on the bike that lead became so huge that by the time the marathon started it was really no longer a question of who would win the race. Nieuwoudt was then in second position with a gap of already more than twenty minutes.
Hollioake won the race in 9:13:08, while her compatriot Katie Remond eventually took second in 9:30:01. Federica de Nicola finished third in 9:42:06.
