It’s not often that Ironman Lanzarote remains so exciting until the very end – that’s almost impossible on such a tough course on which the differences therefore often mount quickly – but today the race was only decided in the very last kilometers. The win eventually went to Frenchman Dylan Magnien.
A lot of things happened during the swim and the bike ride, but the most important thing was that there were already quite a lot of big groups together, which is quite unique on this course. In the closing stages of the 180 leaden kilometers of biking, the differences did widen a bit, but with Jordi Montraveta Moya, Jon Saeveras Breivold, Kristian Grue, Mikel Ugarte Ramos, Mathias Lynsgo Petersen, Anthony Roux, Clement Mignon, Matthew Palmer and Dylan Magnien, nine men came off the bike within a minute and a half of each other.
So Magnien was ninth at that point, but the differences were so small that anything was still possible. It soon became clear that the race was becoming almost unprecedentedly exciting, because even at the halfway point of the run there were still seven men running within a minute of each other. Petersen, Moya, Breivold, Grue and Magnien came through first, but in the kilometers that followed there were several changes in terms of leading position.
Only in the final kilometers did Magnien take the lead and he would not relinquish it anymore. He won the race in 8:27:57, just 38 seconds ahead of Moya (8:28:35), who finished second. Petersen claimed the bronze in a time of 8:31:11.
