A French clean sweep at the World Championship Duathlon in Targu Mures, Romania. The best podium spot was for Krilan Le Bihan, who ran to an incredible win. He got to share the podium with Benjamin Choquert and Maxime Hueber-Moosbrugger.
There were a few athletes that dared to take off fast in the first run. They formed a group of fourteen athletes, but soon some of them started to drop off. 5K into the run – halfway – there were eight men left in the lead; among them Le Bihan.
Just before they reached T1, Belgium’s Arnaud Dely, who was in the lead group, had lost touch. Meanwhile, Britain’s Hugo Milner struggled with his shoes in the transition area, which saw him lose the connection too. Surprisingly, Dely managed to fight back to the front once he was in the saddle.
The chase group of eight was 1:30 minute behind when they stared the bike part, but after a few kilometers they had managed to close that gap. That saw the two groups merge into one big lead group of around fifteen athletes.
In the final kilometers of the bike part, four athletes – Dutch Daan de Groot, Belgium’s Thibaut de Smet, France’s Nathan Guerbeur and Le Bihan – took off. In T2, the four enjoyed a buffer of more than one minute to the rest of the field.
On the run, Le Bihan was untouchable. The Frenchman sprinted to a big win, outrunning Choquert and Hueber-Moosbrugger, who settled for second and third.
