He wasn’t seen as the biggest favorite, but the Frenchman Denis Chevrot has just won Ironman Frankfurt and with that he has also become the European Ironman Champion. The Frenchman finished in a time of 7:52:54, leaving behind Poland’s Robert Wilkowiecki (+3:38) and Frenchman Clément Mignon (+5:49), among others.
Chevrot already started the race quite strongly; he came out of the water in eighth place and then faced a 2:18 minute deficit. Fastest swimmer Lukasz Wojt had thus been out of the water for a while by then, along with three other men, including Wilkowiecki.
While Wojt, who remarkably used the race as training and was going to drop out halfway through the bike ride, rode away from everyone else in the first few kilometers and grabbed a lead of minutes, a group of sixteen chasers emerged behind him. All three eventual podium finishers were in this group and thus laid a good foundation for their eventual top classification.
In the final phase of the bike however, no one was able to match Boris Stein; the German rode mercilessly hard on everyone and hung his bike back in T2 after a bike time of 4:10:29. At four minutes followed the now smaller chasing group still containing the three men who would eventually perform best.
During the run it was Chevrot who immediately began to make up much of his ground, although for a time he had company from several colleagues and it was first the German Paul Schuster who took over the lead in the race from Stein. Halfway through the marathon, however, it was Chevrot who came to run in first position and he did not relinquish that lead anymore.
Chevrot won the race in 7:52:54 and saw Wilkowiecki finish second. Schuster dropped back in the very last kilometers, leaving Mignon to finish third.
