It just didn’t turn out to be the debutant Marten van Riel who won Ironman Cozumel, but instead routinier and compatriot Bart Aernouts. Thus, for Belgian triathlon fans, the race in Mexico was undoubtedly a race with two pros and cons: while the day was more than wonderful for Aernouts, Van Riel’s debut was destroyed due – in all likelihood – a decisive crash.
It was Van Riel who was seen as the favorite beforehand; although today was the first time he had ventured into the 140.6 distance, with last season’s success (last week he crowned himself the winner of the T100 series, ed.) in mind, everyone had faith in a good outcome. Van Riel immediately took the lead during the swim and came out of the water first after 39:48 minutes. Pamphiel Pareyn, also Belgian, followed 1:16 minute behind as the first chaser, and then men like Fernando Toldi, Chris Mintern, Flavio Morandini, Bogdan Kovalenko, Elliot Bach and Nicholas Chase followed. Following that chasing group was a gap of several minutes to the next chasers, and Aernouts followed 16th in T1 with a 5:04 minute deficit.
On the bike, Van Riel was briefly visited by Kovalenko, but he quickly left him behind to eventually ride solo in the lead for a very long time. His lead never became really large, because fluctuating between one and two minutes, a nicely formed group followed with Leon Chevalier, Cameron Wurf, Chris Leiferman, Michael Weiss and also Aernouts.
Until 165 kilometers on the bike, nothing seemed wrong for Van Riel – although the chasing group had joined him by then – but then he suddenly lost 20 minutes in the final 15 kilometers. The Belgian athlete would have been involved in a collision with a crossing girl and then had to wait a long time for the police. Even though this has not yet been officially confirmed, several sources did confirm this.
Van Riel did continue his race, but basically the race was completely over for him. At the same time, this offered additional perspectives for the others and Aernouts did not hesitate for a moment by immediately creating a gap during the run. It ensured that he led the race solo for the entire 42 kilometers and eventually won in a time of 7:39:24. Leiferman finished second in 7:45:12 and Chevalier third in 7:46:58. Van Riel ended up in seventh position after finishing in a time of 7:56:35.
