Perhaps the biggest question of this season: will it be the traditional Long Distance specialists or the young Short Distance specialists who dominate races over the classic distance? If it is up to Magnus Ditlev, all the young guys are training a little longer, as the Dane impressively won Ironman South Africa today, staying ahead of Marten van Riel and debutant Jonas Schomburg, among others.
After a relatively slow swim, Van Riel still, and not surprisingly, came out of the water first: he finished his 3.8 kilometer swim in a time of 50:17 minutes and was then joined by Jamie Riddle, Andrew Horsfall-Turner and also Schomburg. Ditlev immediately had to chase, as the eventual winner came out of the water in eighth place and was then facing a 2:35 minute deficit.
While Schomburg took the initiative during the first kilometers on the bike and immediately pulled away from Van Riel by a minute – and leaving the other men further behind – it was mainly a matter of watching what Ditlev did on the bike. The Dane quickly was giving it his all and cut the gap more and more. Yet it took a while before he caught up; after sixty kilometers he was already riding together with Van Riel, but it took another 25 kilometers before Schomburg was also outsmarted.
The three leaders stayed together for a short while, but Van Riel and Schomburg proved unable to keep up with the fast pace of Ditlev, who after 180 kilometers smashed the bike course record by more than seven minutes. When he was able to leave the tough bike course behind after a bike time of 4:07:22, his lead had increased to 6:17 minutes on Schomburg and 6:30 minutes on Van Riel. The gap to the fourth athlete, Horsfall-Turner, had grown to over 14 minutes by that point, and so the battle for the podium seemed to be limited to the first three men.
Whereas the expectation might have been that Van Riel would be able to close the gap running to Ditlev, that proved not to be the case. Ditlev immediately set a high pace, giving his competitors virtually no chance to get closer. After more than twenty kilometers, Van Riel, who by now had dropped Schomburg, was running at 5:49 minutes and Schomburg followed in third place almost two minutes later.
In the closing stages of the marathon, Ditlev seemed to be pretty destroyed by times, but he didn’t crack at all. Van Riel did get a little closer, but was unable to make things seriously difficult for Ditlev. Ditlev won the race in a time of 7:44:55 and Van Riel finished second in 7:49:28. Schomburg followed in third in a time of 7:52:19.
