The World Cup tour moved to Tongyeong, South Korea, earlier this morning where the world’s best athletes battled it out in a challenging sprint-distance race format. 65 Elite men lined along the South Sea for the 2023 World Triathlon Cup Tongyeong, one of the strongest fields the tour has hosted.
Back-to-back wins for Germany’s Tim
Hellwig with World Cup gold in Tongyeong. A powerful set-up for Portugal’s
Ricardo Batista which resulted in silver and bronze for Sam Dickinson of Great
Britain.
Jamie Riddle, who became South
African champion last weekend, led the field through the swim. New Zealand’s
Dylan McCullough, who was 9th place in the recent World Triathlon Cup Chengdu
and Switzerland’s Simon Westermann were right on his heels. The field of men
was stretched out across the 750m swim as they went around the buoys back into
shore to commence the next portion of the sprint-distance race.
Out of the swim and onto the 20km
bike course it was Germany’s Tim Hellwig and last weekend’s champion in Chengdu
who took control of the segment through the first lap.
20 seconds separated the leading nine
athletes from the next group, which was being driven by Norway’s Casper
Stornes, who was riding in tenth place.
Hellwig, McCullough and Ricardo
Batista exchanged the lead up front, rotating through and keeping the pace high
with the lead group, clawing out over the chasers.
There was now 22 seconds between the
front nine and the big group trying to attack back at the leaders and in hot
pursuit with the likes of Australia’s Jake Birtwhistle putting in an almighty
effort to drive the group.
Jonas Schomburg, Hellwig, McCullough,
Riddle, Sam Dickinson, Jack Willis, Westerman, Ricardo Batista and Aiden
Longcroft-Harris were the top nine athletes taking on the undulations of the bike
course in Tongyeong.
2022 Tongyeong champion Matthew
McElroy and Canada’s Tyler Mislawchuk continued to lead the push of the chasing
charge.
By the final stage of the bike course
the same lead 9 athletes had worked so hard to give themselves a 35-second
cushion as they entered the final transition of the day.
Willis and Dickinson charged out of
transition and led the initial stage of the 5km run. Batista was on the
shoulders of the British athletes and it wasn’t long before the motoring power
of Hellwig moved through to lead the race.
Mislawchuk was making moves further
down the group. The Canadian was overtaking athletes and was the fastest runner
on course today (00:14:31).
Hellwig found another gear again to
run away from Batista and sprint down the finish chute to take gold in
Tongyeong, making it back-to-back World Cup wins for the German with victory
last weekend in Chengdu.
“Super pleased with the result. I
mean, it has been an amazing 2023, so to finish it off with another gold, yeah,
sums up an almost perfect year for me,” said gold medallist Hellwig.
Batista put in an almighty boost to
the finish line to claim a hard-fought silver in today’s World Cup.
“It was a really fast race from the
start. We went a lot with a little group in the front and we tried to not lose
time on the bike and then on the run, it was a fast run and at the end, I just
tried to follow him and I’m really happy with my second place today,” said
silver medallist Batista.
Sam Dickinson held onto third and
came across the line to earn bronze in Tongyeong.
“We had a game plan just to take it
out hard and make it a hard race. So fantastic to see Jack (Willis) up there
with me as well and the two of us just, well, we’re really used to that from
training and so nice to be, nice to be showing off the Union flag at the front
of the race,” said bronze medallist Dickinson.
Review the full results.
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