In rainy Rome, Nina Eim showed she is in excellent shape. After an exciting race, the German athlete won the World Triathlon Cu, mostly thanks to an impressive running leg.
It was the Italian Bianca Seregni who already pulled the field apart during the swim and eventually – after 9:29 minutes – she came out of the water first. A small leading group then formed on the bike, but behind it a larger chasing group came together and pretty soon these women also joined the fastest ladies at that point. This created a leading group of just under twenty women and despite a small crash – involving two athletes – it remained almost completely intact until T2.
During the run, it was Belgium’s Jolien Vermeylen who stormed out of T2 first, but soon it was Nina Eim and Alissa Konig who joined her: the three then grabbed a gap on the rest of the field and were clearly battling each other for the podium places. Behind them, it was Nicole van der Kaay, Olivia Mathias and Verena Steinhauser who tried to keep the gap as small as possible, but they did not manage to connect at the front.
At the front, it was mainly Eim who steadily increased the pace and began to seriously hurt her two direct competitors; Vermeylen was the first to have to leave a small gap, although she did cling on and remained in sight of a win. Until only one kilometer before the finish, when Eim stepped up the pace even more and Vermeylen really had to get off. Konig couldn’t keep up then either and so Eim turned out to be the rightful winner of the day.
She won the race in 1:00:41, Konig was second in 1:00:46 and Vermeylen was third in 1:00:52.
