Less than a week after his victory at the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Nice, Hayden Wilde has just won the T100 French Riviera. In a race that remained thrilling for a long time – and where Wilde ran for kilometers together with Kyle Smith and Jelle Geens in the battle for the podium – Wilde proved to be clearly the strongest in the final stage.
During the two-kilometer swim, a large group of men stayed together; it was the Brit Samuel Dickinson who emerged first from the water at 24:42, but men like Morgan Pearson, Fabian Kraft, Menno Koolhaas, Hayden Wilde, Kyle Smith, Jelle Geens, Wilhelm Hirsch, Rico Bogen, Lasse Nygaard Priester, Jannik Schaufler, Antonio Benito Lopez, Henry Rappo, and Jacob Birtwhistle all followed within ten seconds. After that, there was a minimal gap of just seven seconds before Gregory Payet and Kurt McDonald also climbed out of the water, while a few seconds behind them Youri Keulen followed in seventeenth.
The opening phase on the bike was hectic; the large pack of men struggled to sort out positions, which caused a lot of drafting and strange positional changes, especially in the first few kilometers. Despite that, it was Smith and Bogen who managed to break away at the front, building a lead of about twenty seconds after the first of four bike laps.
The two leaders pushed hard at the front, but Wilde still managed to join them after 35 kilometers of biking, and it didn’t take long after that before Dickinson and Geens also found their way back to the front. That was also immediately the moment when Geens took the initiative on the bike for a long time.
With sixteen kilometers left to bike, during the final bike lap, Bogen received a penalty for discarding his water bottle too late. Right at that moment, Birtwhistle and Benito Lopez also caught up with the lead group, but in an all-or-nothing effort, Bogen went on the attack because he knew he would have to serve a time penalty later in the race. Bogen gained about half a minute, but remarkably, one kilometer before T2, he was suddenly informed by an official that his penalty had been revoked. It made his attack completely pointless all at once – and especially a waste of his burned energy – but the German at least started the 18-kilometer run with a small lead.
Bogen gave it a try of course, but after just two kilometers, Smith and Geens caught up and immediately passed him. A bit later, Wilde also managed to reconnect, leading to a wonderful phase where the three men ran side by side for over five kilometers. The pace was high, and the first to drop off turned out to be Geens, who had to let go after about 10 kilometers. For Wilde, that was the signal to step on the gas once more, which ensured that Smith couldn’t stay with him either.
Wilde won the T100 French Riviera – just like last year, by the way – in a time of 3:06:24. In the final kilometer and thanks to a strong acceleration, Geens still managed to pass Smith, making the Belgian finish second in 3:06:43. Smith finished third in 3:06:48.
