She won the T100 in San Francisco as well as in Ibiza, and today Taylor Knibb won her third out of three T100 races: as is the case every time, she now rode her bike to a huge lead in Las Vegas as well, and with that the tension from the race was gone early on.
Knibb was right there with the swim, although Haley Chura, Taylor Spivey and Flora Duffy were a few seconds ahead of her as she exited the water. It was Chura who recorded the fastest time – 24:46 minutes over 2 kilometers – but in her wake thus followed the other three women and their lead over the rest of the field was by then well over a minute already.
On the bike, what many had already anticipated happened almost immediately: Knibb needed only a few kilometers to ride away from the other three women and from then on it went fast. With an average higher than all the other women, her lead grew bigger and bigger. There were several changes of position and a number of women, including Lucy Byram, Flora Duffy and Paula Findlay, were given time penalties behind Knibb, but it all didn’t really matter much; everyone was looking at Knibb and stayed that way.
When Knibb, after 80 kilometers and 1:58:09 on the bike, returned to T2, her lead over Byram was 4:55 minutes. Derron started the 18-kilometer run in third position and was 5:19 minutes behind Knibb at that point. Duffy returned to T2 in fourth, but was 7:33 minutes behind by then.
During the run, the race got nowhere exciting anymore; Derron may have run a lot faster than Knibb and even made up more than three minutes, but it was not nearly enough to turn the more than five-minute deficit into a lead. Knibb eventually won the race in 3:37:03, while Derron finished second in 3:39:17. Duffy finished third in 3:44:04.
