When Solveig Lovseth won the Ironman World Championship on Kona last year, it came as a huge surprise to almost everyone. Additionally, it was immediately said that the Norwegian athlete had been very lucky with both Taylor Knibb and Lucy Charles-Barclay dropping out in the final kilometers. However, today Lovseth proved once again that she is no one-hit wonder by winning the European Championship Ironman in Hamburg in dominant fashion and only some weeks after her stunning Ironman Texas victory.
The swim leg was initially led by the Dutch Lotte Wilms, who came out of the water after 50:29 minutes and was immediately followed by Holly Lawrence, Fenella Langridge, Kate Curran, and Charlotte McShane. Next, it was Marjolaine Pierré and Maaike Vooren who were allowed to head to the bikes just over three minutes later, while top favorites Laura Philipp and Lovseth also exited the water at around 4:30.
On the bike, it was the British Lawrence who immediately went on the attack and rode away from everyone, even though a few minutes behind her, Pierré was clearly setting the highest pace. This was also immediately reflected in the standings, because while Wilms caught up again in second position to a slightly fading Lawrence, Pierré quickly passed them to take the lead solo: after 35 kilometers on the bike, she had a 37-second lead over Wilms and Lawrence, while Langridge followed in fourth at 1:35 minutes. Next followed Kate Curran and Lisa Perterer at 3:30 minutes, before Lovseth and Philipp followed at 4:11 minutes, meaning they had gained back about twenty seconds.
After a hundred kilometers, it became truly clear just how well Pierré was biking, as Wilms already faced a 2:55-minute deficit, Lovseth 4:30 minutes, Lawrence 5:12 minutes, Lisa Perterer 5:54, and Philipp even 6:08 minutes. This was also the phase in which the pro athletes increasingly had to maneuver through the Age Groupers, something that occasionally led to considerable frustration for Pierré.
It was also the trigger for a somewhat changing race dynamic, because while all the women started to lose more and more time to Pierré, Lovseth actually began to gain time from third position. After 135 kilometers she caught up with Wilms, and after 150 kilometers she had closed the gap on Pierré to just 2:27 minutes. In T2, the lead of the frontrunner had almost completely vanished, as the gap between Pierré and Lovseth was then only 37 seconds. Wilms still followed in third position at 2:41 minutes, but behind her, it was especially Philipp who had suffered heavy damage: she returned to T2 in seventh place, but by then faced a deficit of just under nine minutes. Just ahead of Philipp at that moment ran athletes like Katrine Graesboll Christensen and India Lee.
Philipp may not have had a great day on the bike, but during the marathon, that changed completely. At a rapid pace, she began picking up women and making up time. Yet, all of this still happened at an appropriate distance behind Lovseth, who for her part surpassed Pierré in the very first kilometers and thus took the lead in the race. In an impressive manner, she ticked off kilometer after kilometer, passing the halfway mark with a lead of 4:29 minutes over Pierré and 6:18 minutes over Philipp.
For Lovseth, a second half of the marathon followed in which she clearly found it more difficult, but in which she also proved to possess more than enough resilience to secure the title. Philipp, who advanced to second place, came closer and closer, but the gap between the two was too large to become truly exciting.
Lovseth won the European Championship Ironman in Hamburg in a time of 8:11:11, while Philipp finished second in 8:12:29. Graesboll Christensen took a nice third place in 8:15:20.
