Two-time defending champion Jelle Geens will soon be joined by an additional compatriot at the start of the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Nice: Belgian triathlete Marten van Riel has just won Ironman 70.3 Elsinore, meaning he can also start preparing for a trip to the southern coast of France.
Heading into IM 70.3 Elsinore, Van Riel was already considered the biggest favorite for the victory, and he lived up to that expectation right from the start. During the swim, it was Germany’s Hannes Butters who proved fastest with a time of 21:47 minutes, but men like Jamie Riddle, Ben Faeh, Ollie Turner, Van Riel, Fraser Minnican, and Valdemar Solok followed closely at his heels. Naturally, these men stayed together on the bike for a while, but that cooperation did not last very long.
Two men stood out on the bike: Van Riel and Solok, who broke away from the rest as a duo fairly quickly and saw their lead grow rapidly. Second by second, the gap widened, eventually reaching 2:18 minutes in T2. Behind the two leaders followed a chase group including Pierre Dupuy, Kristian Hogenhaug, Riddle, Faeh, and Butters.
During the run, the virtually inevitable happened; Van Riel proved to be the strongest runner, and even though Solok impressively managed to hang on for about five kilometers, the elastic band between the two finally snapped and Van Riel broke away. For a while, the gap between them hovered around half a minute, but in the final stages, Van Riel managed to pull away significantly.
Van Riel won the race in a time of 3:36:03. Solok finished second in 3:37:18 and Frenchman Simon Viain ran impressively from thirteenth to third place and finished in 3:39:00.
