President Putin welcomes First IRONMAN in the History of Russia
President Vladimir Putin sent a message of greetings to the participants in the first ever IRONMAN in the history of Russia.
In the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, (the birthplace of President Putin) 2,500 athletes descended upon the country’s ‘culture capital’ for the inaugural event hosted on August 1st 2021 with the race offering age-group qualifying slots to the 2021 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in St. George, Utah, USA.
The IRONMAN 70.3 St. Petersburg was originally scheduled for take place in 2020 and sold out within 30 hours of registration commencement. had to wait a year having been postponed due the pandemic. With world travel restrictions in place the majority of the athletes in the event’s first edition were from the host country, with work still to be done on diversity with the ratio of entrants being female athletes 13% versus males at 87%.
President Putin’s message underlined how important the sport of Triathlon is to Russia participation in international projects aimed at popularising “the values of healthy living” and was confident that the IRONMAN event would make “triathlon even more popular in Russia.”
St. Petersburg dubbed “Venice of the North” because of its many waterways was an ideal location for Russia first IRONMAN event. The course included a 1,9 km swim in the historic St. Petersburg rowing channel, a 90 km bike course starting at the on the Yacht Bridge and working its way down the St. Petersburg Sea wall to the walled town of Kronstadt. The three-loop bike course includes 435 m of climbing. The racing day ended with a 21,1 km run course on Yelagin Island before finishing near the Gazprom Arena stadium.
Three-time Junior silver Olympic medalist Kristina Kochetkova clinched the women’s Gold, with Daria Chunareva ending as runner-up.
Ilya Slepov claimed top honours in the men’s competition with Denis Krestin runner up.
