Lucy Hall (GB) and Magnus Ditlev (DEN) take wins at Challenge Budva-Montenegro
Lucy Hall (GB) and Magnus Ditlev (DEN) took the wins at the inaugural Challenge Budva-Montenegro with emphatic victories in a stacked field of world class athletes.
The stage was set early Sunday morning as the pro-athletes prepared to swim1.9k in the crystal blue Adriatic Sea, bike 90km through the historic streets of the ancient town of Budva, and along the Montenegro coast then run 21.1km along the Budva seafront, with its Mediterranean atmosphere.
Womens Race
Lucy Hall is an Olympian and known for being one of the fastest swimmers in the sport medalling gold at both European and World Cup short course triathlon competitions. So, it was no surprise to see Hall exit the water first with a gap of nearly three minutes from Switzerland’s Emma Billiam and Hungarian Gabriella Zelinka with the chasers a further 5 minutes behind the leader. .
Out of T1 and onto the bike section. Hall is also renown as a bike-beast and can power down with best of them and she did exactly that as she maintained her lead although Billiam was making a fight of it and closing the gap significantly with a brilliant ride with Els Visser (NED) also making ground moving up to third place.
Out of T2 onto the run and it was it was just a matter of Hall maintaining her lead over the 21.1km run from the chasing duo of Billiam and Visser. And that she did, crossing the finishing line in a time of 4:17:09, with Billiam finishing second 00:02:14 minutes behind and Visser crossing the line in third 00:04:32 minutes behind.
Men’s Race
On paper the men’s race looked a very tight affair with any number of the athletes able to deliver a surprise on the day from the Danish duo of Nils Frommhold and Magnus Ditlev to Patrick Lange (DEU), recent winner of DATEV Challenge Roth, to the likes of Ruedi Wild (SUI), Mattia Ceccarelli (ITA) and Ognjen Stojanovic (SER).
And this looked the case as 11 front pack athletes exited the water all within less than 2 minutes of each other. Out onto the bike and it was the Dane, Magnus Ditlev, who showed great gusto as he powered away on the bike to build up what appeared an insurmountable lead against his nearest rivals Lange, Frommhold, Ceccarelli and Wild
However the lead was not so insurmountable as Ditlev picked up a 5 minute time penalty. Lange and Frommhold could sense their opportunity of victory if they could run down Ditlev diluted lead. But Ditlev was in top form and even though Lange ran at tremendous pace and was eating away at Ditlev narrow time lead with every stride Ditlev was holding form
Ditlev maintained his lead crossing the line in first place with a time of 3:46:29 albeit the finish-line clock read (03.41.30) not taking account of the time penalty. Lange taking second just 00:01:52 minutes behind Ditlev’s official winning time. It was the fastest runner of the day Ruedi Wild who blitzed his way past Frommhold in the final stages to take home the third spot in 03:50:42.
