Frenchman Denis Chevrot has just crowned himself European Champion Ironman in Hamburg. In doing so, the Frenchman beat top favorite Jan Frodeno, among others, but the celebration was completely overshadowed by a fatal accident that occurred during the bike leg. In that accident, a motard from the organization collided with a cyclist. The motard died because of the accident.
You can find more about the terrible accident here. The race did start off beautifully though, with Frodeno coming out of the water first after 46:35 minutes. He was followed by a large group with almost all the favorites and on the bike a leading group of nine men emerged: in addition to Frodeno and Chevrot, they included Kristian Hogenhaug, Josh Amberger, Jesper Svensson, Florian Angert, Pieter Heemeryck, Robert Kallin and Finn Grosse-Freese. The second half of the bike leg saw real acceleration – mainly by Hogenhaug – and the Dane ended up leading all the way solo. Once back in T2, the former Challenge Almere-Amsterdam winner had a lead of over two minutes over Frodeno, Kallin, Svensson and Heemeryck, and behind them the gap was even wider with the men following. Chevrot followed at over three minutes.
During the run, it was Frodeno and Heemeryck who quickly ran to the front and had joined Hogenhaug after only ten kilometers. Chevrot also quickly approached and was then running fourth only a minute and a half behind. From that point on, Frodeno took the lead in the race as he also slowly but surely ran away from Heemeryck, but at the same time it was Chevrot who was overwhelmingly running the best. The Frenchman first picked up Heemeryck and after 25 kilometers he also passed Frodeno, who in turn could not catch up.
Chevrot ran to victory from that point on. He did so in a lightning-fast time of 7:26:21. In the final three kilometers, a particularly exciting battle for the silver, bronze and chocolate medal ensued between Frodeno, Heemeryck and Hogenhaug, who ran within twenty seconds of each other. Heemeryck ultimately proved the fastest, finishing second in 7:31:01, while Hogenhaug took the bronze in 7:31:12, leaving Frodeno just outside the podium.
Fatal accident
The day was logically overshadowed by a very sad and fatal accident. The live broadcast of the race was halted on all German television channels. Ironman received much criticism about the way it handled the accident: the livestream did not give any attention to the tragedy until a few hours after the accident. Commentators kept emphasizing that it was ‘a wonderful day’. Meanwhile, the negative/ignorant comments poured in, but Ironman decided to turn those off. Only a few hours after the fatal accident, Ironman let it be known that there was “an unfortunate accident”, not giving any extra information.
