She had to wait a while for it, but Georgia Taylor-Brown has now officially secured her first T100 victory: today she was the strongest at the T100 Spain, where she primarily had to fend off Switzerland’s Julie Derron and fellow Swiss athlete Alanis Siffert.
Right from the start of the two-kilometer swim, Taylor-Brown was in an excellent position, even though the swim leg was initially led by Spain’s Sara Perez Sala (26:12). However, Perez Sala couldn’t break away, and following closely in her wake were athletes like Taylor Spivey, Sophie Evans, Natalie van Coevorden, Taylor-Brown, Holly Lawrence, Bianca Bogen, Nicole van der Kaay, Imogen Simmonds, Hanne de Vet, Lotte Wilms, and Julie Derron, who all exited the water within twenty seconds of each other. There was immediate bad news for Wilms, however, who learned she had to serve a 30-second time penalty in T1 for moving too early during the start procedure and stepping outside her starting box before the starting gun.
Initially, many of the women from the original lead group stayed together on the bike, but a selection was quickly made. Halfway through the 80-kilometer bike leg, Derron was leading, with Taylor-Brown, Siffert, and De Vet all following within half a minute. Meanwhile, Simmonds trailed by 45 seconds, and the gap behind her had grown to at least 1:15 minutes. By the time they reached T2, the gaps had widened significantly; Siffert had caught up to Derron and had even built a 13-second lead. Behind them, Taylor-Brown started the 18-kilometer run facing a 59-second deficit, while Simmonds was already looking at a gap of 2:38 minutes.
During the run, Siffert could only maintain her lead for a short time; Derron flew past her almost immediately to take over the lead of the race. Yet, that didn’t last very long either, as Taylor-Brown overtook both athletes within a few kilometers and officially took the lead after five kilometers. From that moment on, her lead grew rapidly: over the next five kilometers, the gap to Derron increased to nearly two minutes.
Ultimately, Taylor-Brown won the race in a time of 3:38:03, while Derron came in second in 3:39:23. In the final stages, Siffert began to falter, causing her to lose third place to a strong-running Spivey. The American thus finished third in a time of 3:41:29.
