Europe Triathlon

Close to the traditional athletic city of Rieti, in the middle of steep mountains an enormous damm refresh more than 50km of new created coast. This was the backdrop of this triathlon. The athletes swam over the sumerged city of Borgo San Pietro, and bike and ran through the streets, built when the damm close the water in the valley.

Up to this coin of the center of Italy travelled athletes from 13 countries including Australia and New Zealand, looking to climb on the ITU points list to have a more easy access to the coming BG World Cup events.

The women race produced a group of 4 athletes since the very begining, and Szabo/HUN, Chenevier and Ianesi/ITA and Mc Leod/IRL worked together all the swim and all the bike since they created a big gap to the chasers. Once in the shaped run under the pinewoods, the two Italians weren’t able to follow the speed of McLeod, with Szabo glued to her back. The continous attacks of the Irish were successless, the Hungarian was too strong today and her accelaration at km 9 was definitive.

The men race repeated the model we saw in a lot of world cups. Neither the steep hill inside Borgo Sant Pietro, nor the turned flat section produced breaks in the groups. The small group coming first out of the water (Alonso/ESP and Molinari, Oriana, Fiorella, Risti and Ciavatella/ITA) rode alone the first of the six laps. Other half dozen of athletes join them at km6 to compose the leader group till the end of the segment. The chasing group was behind, with a time difference oscilating from 40 to 90 seconds in diferent moments of the race.

Once on the run the energy spent in the tuff and difficult bike weigh on every athlete’s legs. By this we saw some athletes with dificulties, and the strongest (not always the fastest) were the best today. Only a guy with a marathon runner figure, comply with the expectatives: Attila Fecsovics/HUN was able to come from the second group and pass one by one almost all of the members of the first pack.  Two Italians: Ferraro and Fiorella remained out his possiblities thanks to the wonderful effort made by both italians.

Italy will hold the next international event on October 6th to 8th organising the European Duathlon Championships. You can’t miss it.