Beth Potter victorious as GB women triathletes take top spots at SLT Arena Games!
The SLT Arena Games, London, today saw epic battles in the women’s and men’s unique mix of real life and visual racing powered by Zwift. Three races, only ten minutes apart the ‘Triple Mix’ followed through on the pre-race guarantee of changing the elements and testing the versatility and endurance of each of the athletes. Each race included a 200m swim/4km bicycle/1km run – with the race order shuffled each round. This was a spectacle of maximum excitement for viewers and maximum suffering for athletes.
These races were not like a normal triathlon, the end-state winner is a blend of points and time. Each stage is absolutely time based, so the first person across the virtual running race finish line is the ‘winner’ for that stage, and awarded 10 points, 2nd person is 9 points, and so on. However, for Stage 2, they all start ‘equal’ again, and then a second set of points are awarded based on that particular Stage. Rinse, repeat again, and a winner is crowned. Below is an example of how a ‘Triple Mix; format and points allocation works:
Women’s race
Britain’s Beth Potter put in a superb performance in a formable field to win the women’s race. By stage three of the ‘Triple Mix’ Beth Potter, with fellow Brits Lucy Charles-Barclay and Sophie Coldwell were all on 18 points from the first two stages. With the race order shuffled the final stage saw Stage three consisted of bike-swim-run format. On the bike section the group remain intact and into the swim with Charles-Barclay exiting first with a slight advantage over the chasing field. The final battle was all down to the final 1km run and it was Charles-Barclay leading by 3 seconds with 800 metres to go. That lead would disappear in the final 600 metres as Potters run power propelled her forward as the Scottish athlete blew away the competition to cross the line 7 seconds ahead of Charles-Barclay who took second place and ahead of third placed Coldwell.
Men’s Race
Just like in the women’s race, the men’s final battle was all down to the final 1km run and it was Belgium’s Marten Ban Riel who ran out victorious after putting in consistently good performance over all three stages of the race. By stage three of the ‘Triple Mix’ Van Riel was on 19 point with Johnathan Brownlee on 16 point and Alex Yee on 14 points. The bike stage kicked off the showdown by again, mirroring the women, the group stayed intact. Onto the 200m swim, and Schomborg of Germany would take the lead ahead of his fellow countryman, Nieschlag, and just ahead of the Brits of Yee and Brownlee and Van Riel, and the five would enter the final transition together. As with the preceding women’s race won by Beth Potter, the Arena Games would come down to the ninth and final discipline of the day, but it would be the Belgian Van Riel who’d score the most points ahead of Germany’s Nieschlag, and fellow Brits Brownlee and Yee. The overall result and points tallies wouldn’t instantly produce a clear winner, but it would be Van Riel who’d take the overall Arena Games title with 27 points, ahead of Nieschlag on 24, and Brownlee and Yee on 23 points ( with Yee given 3rd place on a mathematical race formula) .
