While all eyes were on top favorites Lucy Charles-Barclay and Kat Matthews, a classic proverb came to life today: when two dogs fight over a bone, a third runs away with it. That saying perfectly captured the action at Challenge Roth, where Switzerland’s Alanis Siffert caused a major upset with a magnificent and, for many, unexpected victory.
During the swim, everything went exactly as anyone could have predicted on paper: Lucy Charles-Barclay took the initiative, stretching out the field right from the opening meters to take a solo lead. However, her swim time of 50:23 minutes wasn’t enough to create truly massive gaps. Debutant Caroline Pohle followed in second place heading into T1, 1:36 minutes behind, with Alanis Siffert, Fenella Langridge, and Daisy Davies right on her heels. For Matthews – who was widely considered another pre-race favorite – there was plenty of work to do; she headed to her bike in seventh place, already trailing by more than six minutes.
While Charles-Barclay usually maintains the lead for a long time during the bike leg – if not all the way to the finish – today was a different story. Within the first few kilometers, Siffert, Davies, and Pohle rode their way to the front, and it didn’t take long for them to overtake the British top athlete. Siffert’s aggressive riding style was particularly striking; after about forty kilometers, she left everyone behind, and by the fifty-kilometer mark, she had already established a one-minute gap over the other three women. Meanwhile, Langridge lost significant time, and Matthews also failed to close the distance.
What followed was a bike leg dominated by Siffert, though Pohle and Charles-Barclay managed to keep the gap to about a minute all the way into T2. All the other women lost substantial ground: entering the transition to the marathon, Davies came in 6:36 minutes behind, and Matthews was well back at 12:27 minutes. Equally striking was Charles-Barclay’s transition; in T2, she decided to duck into a porta-potty to swap her trisuit for what can only be described as a running outfit consisting of a crop top and swim briefs.
While that outfit was meant to help Charles-Barclay run faster, and she did indeed leave Pohle behind, Siffert proved to be simply in a league of her own. In the opening kilometers, her lead grew by another half a minute, which turned out to be just a taste of what was to come. Siffert didn’t falter anywhere – not even for a second – and ultimately cruised to a beautiful victory in 8:09:09. Charles-Barclay finished second in 8:16:41 and Davies, who passed Pohle in the final stages, finished third in 8:27:19.
