Chartier and Norden win Challenge Salou Triathlon without having to swim
Collin Chartier (USA) and Lisa Norden (SWE) win Challenge Salou after the slogan ‘we are triathlon!’ was rearranged to read ‘duathlon’ as extreme weather conditions forced the swimming leg to be eliminated.
The onset of strong winds and huge waves made unfavourable swim conditions for the swim portion of the race. The 1,900m swim leg was exchanged for a 5k run. Duathlon is sometimes derided as triathlon’s poor cousin but be in no doubt this race could have been arguably harder that the triathlon as the first 5k run can absolutely kill your legs if you get it wrong, and you still have a long 90km bike and another 21.1km run to come.
Men’s Race
The athletes line up for a 5k first leg run and it was Dutchman Egdom who reach T1 first in a time of 13.57 with the wind behind his back closely followed by Chartier and New Zealand’s Kyle Smith.
Onto the bike section and it was Germany’s Frederic Funk who was pushing the watts to make up his 27 second run deficit and at the halfway stage Funk had pushed to the front with Smith and Chartier over a minute behind with a group of eight several minutes behind them. And that how they entered T2 with Funk having built up a commanding lead of over 3 minutes over his nearest rivals and a massive 5 minutes over Egdom and Deckard as the exited T2.
Onto the run and Funk could not convert his bike pace into race pace and started to go backwords and dropped out of the top three with Chartier finding his running legs to move to the front. Half way through the run Van Egdom and Deckard moved up the field in 2rd and 3rd place respectively.
And that is how the positions remained as Chartier crossed the winning tape in a time of 03:28:52. Jorik van Egdom from the Netherlands taking home the sliver in second place (+2:29), while American Robbie Deckard rounded of the podium spots coming in third (+4:56).
Womens Race
The women set of on the first run of the duathlon a 5k slog feast of speed and endeavour and it was Spain’s Sara Perez Sala who took the bull by the horns and laid down the marker as she entered T1 first in a time of 15:39 with Sweden’s Norden closely behind with Netherland’s Els Visser and GB’s Lucy Hall to keep her company.
Once onto the bike section if was all one-way traffic for Norden as she powered her way to the front while Perez Sala, Visser and Hall made up a chase pack quartet. Norden heading in and out of T2 onto the run section with a time gap of over 5 minutes on the chasing quartet.
And that’s the way it remained right to the winning tape as Norden crossed the winning line in a time of 03:51:09. Visser and Hall were stronger of the chasing quartet and ran side by side until the latter stage of the run where the Dutchwomen Visser pushed ahead to take second place (+7:52) with Brit Lucy Hall rounding of the podium spots with third place (+8:33).
